Daniel Klein

A little over a year ago, The Perennial Plate crew left on our "Real Food Road Trip." We traveled over 23,000 miles across 43 states making over 50 films. We went down a canyon in Utah and up a mountain in Washington. We went underwater in California and traveled...

Asian Carp are quickly becoming the invasive species to beat. They are showing up and taking over in rivers across the country and threatening native species by out-competing fish for the plankton that forms the base of the aquatic food chain. We met with a fisherman on the Peoria River...

The ideas of cooperative work are central to many movements in Latin America. Nelson Escobar has brought those ideas from his home in El Salvador to Louisville, Kentucky where he coordinates a large urban farm that brings together a diverse community to grow, eat and sell good food. This inspring...

It's not often that you look out your suburban backyard to find a man herding goats, but that is what people in one neighborhood in Louisville experience every day. Burundian refugee Jean-Marie herds goats within the Louisville, Kentucky city limits. He sells them to the growing immigrant and refugee population....

The backyard chicken trend is becoming more and more prevalent these days. But in many North American cities, keeping a flock of hens is still illegal. On our cross country Real Food Road Trip, we met up with some unlikely outlaws who were breaking the law right in...

In the event of a nuclear disaster, zombies taking over the planet, or industrial food collapse -- the subject of our latest film is who you'd want to be friends with. This short film is a meditation on survival and the beauty of doing things that are no longer necessary,...

Over the course of 30 years, the island of Boca Grande in Florida went from having zero iguanas to over 10,000. This invasive species was making it impossible for native plants and animals to survive. The island finally decided to do something about it; they called George Cera. We went...

We made this short film in Immokalee Florida (where 1/3 of the tomatoes in our grocery stores are grown). We spent a day with Lupe Gonzalo, a tomato picker and organizer for CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers). The Coalition is fighting to change the way our country's tomato...

There are two types of mullet in Florida: One is a hair style made popular in the nineties, the other is a type of fish. We chose to focus on the latter (sorry, but it's super sustainable and really healthy) in our latest Perennial Plate episode. Some people...

At the outset, I'd like to note that I spent several years following a vegetarian, then vegan, diet. I understand many of the reasons people stop eating animal-based food -- many of them are compelling and valid under the current mainstream meat eating/producing industry. However many of the negatives associated...

On our way through South Carolina, we cooked and collaborated on a multi-course dinner with Sean Brock (of Husk and McCrady's) consisting entirely of grains from Anson Mills -- the seminal grits and rice producer in the United States. But...

When our road trip took us through South Carolina, we asked Sean Brock (the Chef at Husk) about farmers to check out near Charleston, he recommended the Joseph Fields Farm. The piece of land has been in the Fields family for three generations and has...

In this week's episode we visit a school garden and take a class on radishes with Ashley Rouse of Georgia Organics. Kids are in a lot of our videos - they are cute and they are the future. Its our last video (of three) in Georgia...

WARNING: do not watch if you are hungry and are without easy access to Vietnamese food. We are interrupting our weekly Perennial Plate episodes to bring you a cool little video we made. Last month we were invited to go on an Intrepid Travel trip to...

About three years ago, I met a lovely young lady at a cheese shop in Minneapolis. She said it was love at first sight, I said she had a lot of potential....

There have been a lot of Farm to Table dinners over the years, and a lot of videos about those meals. We are here to end all that. Some videos are all food porn, others are only about the farmers. This Southern Feast shares the story of the farmers, foragers...

On our way through Atlanta we stopped at a very diverse community garden run by Friends of Refugees. It's home to the vegetable patches of Iraqis, Burmese, Nepalese and many others, including a lovely Bhutanese family that shared their story and a home cooked meal with...

This was a piece posted on The Perennial Plate blog earlier this week by camera woman, co-producer and blogger Mirra Fine regarding the end of our six month film shoot/road trip across the U.S. Follow Mirra on Twitter

If you havent heard, invasive species are huge these...

John McEntire is the only person in the world that grows Crooked Creek Corn, a once common crop in the South East. On our trip to his North Carolina farm, John shared stories and tastes of his heirloom corn and the moonshine it can produce, as well as a drink...

On our way across North Carolina, we stopped to chat with some Native American Farmers trying to change the food and work situation in their communities. Plagued with high poverty rates and little access to good food, these folks were inspiring in their efforts to farm in a...