Chef, author, activist, and podcaster Julia Turshen’s list of accomplishments is loooong. Turshen, who lives in Ulster County with her spouse Grace Bonney, has written four cookbooks to date as well as articles and recipes for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and Bon Appétit. Her frame-able accolades include making Epicurious’s list of 100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time and the NYT calling her podcast, “Keep Calm and Cook On,” an “antidote to diet culture.”
In keeping with her approachable vein of home cooking, Turshen never went the restaurateur route. Her latest venture, a collab with trans/queer chef Emmet Moeller, is about as charmingly homegrown as it gets. The Full Fridge Club, which launched in September, is like a personal chef service for the not-so-rich and not-so-famous. “Feeding yourself well and also working is really hard,” Moeller says. “Full Fridge Club is a way for us to help lighten the load.”
Moeller, of Kingston-based "queer and flexible food space" Common Table, brings his own hefty resume to the chef's table. Trained at Natural Gourmet institute, he's worked at Marlow & Sons and Hyssop and studied under fermentation guru Sandor Katz. He brings a background in boutique catering and meal subscription/delivery service to the new undertaking, which aims to provide locally sourced, vegetable-heavy, weekly meals to upstate households. “The idea for Full Fridge Club came to me early in the pandemic," Moeller says. "My partner and I were trying to figure out what to cook for dinner (again), and she said to me ‘I don't remember having to eat dinner this often.'" Relatable.
We all aspire to be that person that dedicates their Sunday to peaceful meal prep for the coming week, lining up stacks of tidy Tupperwares with colorful, healthy options to keep us sustained till the weekend. But the reality is more often kids, laundry, errands, the New Yorker if we're feeling ambitious, wine, laundry, go outside?, book, The Last of Us. Somehow that week’s worth of meals doesn’t magically make itself. “Julia and I have both worked as personal/private chefs, and we both know the positive impact of being able to open your fridge to find it full of ready-to-eat food—it's a huge leg up for the week!” Moeller says.
Enter the Turshen-Moeller power combo. All of the Full Fridge Club meals are balanced and gluten-free with the option to cut out meat, dairy, nuts, and/or cilantro. Upcoming dishes include kimchi stew with tofu, garlicky roasted Brussels sprouts, roasted jackfruit and chickpea curry with spinach, and buttery herbed polenta. Meat add-ons include a Mississippi roast and gochujang-glazed turkey meatloaf with shiitakes. Turshen and Moeller are working with local producers like Wild Hive,
Weekly meal pickup is on Monday evenings in Common Table’s Hurley Avenue location (with limited delivery to surrounding areas). You can sign up for a subscription or buy a week one-off. For every customer, a meal a week is donated to Kingston’s Community Fridges (to date they’ve donated 400 and counting!).
“While meal subscriptions have become much more popular over the years, we haven't seen many with a stated mission of sustainability (planet and workers), supporting small local farmers, and a built-in plan to concretely fight food insecurity in the community,” Moeller says. “We plan menus based on what the local farms have to offer; we strive to create a fun, stable, and safe working environment for our all-LGBTQ+ team; we pack the community fridges with free meals each week; and we put great care and personal attention into every dish we make. It's an everybody-wins situation.”
Amid recent political attacks on gay and trans rights, the visibility of an LGBTQ+-owned, -operated, and -employed business is an important facet of the Full Fridge Club for both partners. “The more FFC grows, the more we've been able to employ more teammates, all of whom happen to be part of the LGBTQ+ community,” Turshen says. “Creating this safe space feels more important than ever.”
