Lily Venable: Food-tography and Finding Purpose
Across the table, over a setting of tea, Lily speaks, glowing with the same warmth and vivacity of the photos she takes of the Keweenaw community. It’s hard to imagine she ever lived elsewhere than the Keweenaw, though you’ll find she’s done quite a bit of travelling around the country to find her forever home. In her travels and work, Lily has discovered her passions and honed her skills.
Thank you Lily for coming over to chat about all things food, photography, and family - it was such a treat!
Introduction and editing by Claire Troemner
When did you start cooking and who taught you how to cook?
I started cooking when I was a young adult - like early twenties - nobody taught me how to cook.
I really had to muscle through it because nobody taught me. I was Googling what “sauté” meant. I kind of just figured it out, and yet I kind of already knew how. I think it's in us like ancestrally, so don't overthink it.
Actually, leading up to this interview, I’m in the shower like “what is the goal of all this? Why do I care so much?” And I realized my target audience is really just a previous version of me. Someone who grew up where food wasn’t prioritized, doesn’t think they can cook, maybe someone who is stressed, or neurodivergent, or gets overwhelmed. I’d like to teach them that the most important thing to do is just to start. It’s been so enriching to my life.
Did you not have good resources available to you?
Not really. I was the youngest of seven. My mom was your classic strong and resourceful single mom. But she’s a good example of someone that did not feel empowered about food. Teaching all the kids to cook was not on her radar - she was just trying to get dinner out. To this day she's like “ohh I'm not a good cook… I don't know how to cook.” I’m like “Yes, yes you did cook - you fed 7 kids every day.”
Mom has a holiday sausage ball recipe that everybody loves! Her cheesy roasted nachos with jalapeños were also a hit. To this day, she always has a colander of fresh green grapes in the fridge, and now I keep a colander of fresh green grapes in my fridge for Felix. So yeah, you think what you’re doing isn’t important, that you’re not a good cook or whatever. But food is big. Those memories matter.
How did you end up being the go-to food photographer for small farms in the area?
Ohh you're making me blush. I can tell you how but it's a long story.
It really started when I was managing a pizza restaurant. I am first and foremost a pizza girl. I did that for 7 years, nearly all of my formative years in my twenties. It kept me busy but I started to become a bit disengaged. I guess it felt like I had seen it all. One day one of my delivery drivers had gotten some poke (marinated ahi tuna) from the deli at the grocery store next door.
I remember him opening the package up and letting me try a cube. I definitely hyperfixated on that deliciousness and was on the hunt for poke all the time. There were several spots that had it, and I was inspired by all the color and flavor that’s packed into a poke bowl.
I was living in Oregon with my at the time boyfriend. We were young. We didn't have kids. We went to all the breweries to drink and all the food spots every day - sometimes multiple times a day. He was a beer hobbyist, and I was into finding cool food and food trucks. We just worked and we ate. I was 20, 21, and this was back when taking pictures of your food was taboo. But you have to take pictures of it - especially in Eugene, Oregon, where there was so much stuff going on. And there was something beautiful on my plate every day, so I wanted to share it.
I started my own Instagram just for all my food pictures - it was the natural next step. This was back when Instagram was simple. It was “Lily Eats Eugene” and people were really interested in where to eat in Eugene. It’s a bigger town so there was a constant influx of people. It grew quickly, and I remember being astounded by that - and the photos were just with my phone.
Then I moved across the country several times in the next few years. It was “Lily Eats Eugene” and then Tennessee and I moved to North Dakota and Florida. I just made it “Lily Eats USA” for a bit.
When we were living in Bismarck I was dropping off some Eat Local stickers for my Instagram, and the grocery manager said I should apply for an open marketing position. The owner was impressed with my social media skills. She was like, “We need your fresh young energy. This Co-op - we're dying, we're gonna close if we don't get some help.”
I was a new mom, I was bored and itching to do more. I’m one of those people that always has to be working on a lot of stuff. I said “Absolutely.” She hired me as a marketing manager on a team - at first it was me and an experienced graphic designer. I was more of a writer. But we had to blend styles so I was able to learn a lot from her and embrace my own design skills that I had never really used. That was amazing - I was designing billboards, websites, newsletters, specials graphics, deli menus. We did text message marketing, digital ads, brochures, lots of classes and events. And I loved interviewing farmers and bakers and doing features in the newsletter every week. I crunched out one feature article per week for two years. I had developed quite the formula.
I eventually made my way here - I always say by luck, sheer willpower and some divine intervention. I was like, “I’m gonna stick around here.”
I changed it to “Lily Eats UP”. I started working at the Co-op. When I worked at the Bismarck Co-op, I really admired the produce manager. I was like “Man, they're the coolest. I would love that job!” When a produce position opened here at the Co-op, I jumped on it. I piloted a project there featuring local farmers like I did in Bismarck, but with photography this time. Photography was always something that was in me that needed to get out. It’s a good way to combine art, nature, and my love of people.
But I’ve been blessed with lots of opportunities to work in the local food space, at the market, for the schools, as a photographer, even for food marketing agencies and offering those resources as a freelancer. And I still get to enact my love of working in produce over summers in Marquette.
So Lily Eats started out as mostly poke bowl pictures, and now it’s farmers and farm dinners and camping and other kinds of businesses and their people. And then Felix came along, and he has his fan club too. It’s just whatever I’m up to. Sometimes I’m not really sure what it is. It’s me. It can be scary sometimes, to be known and perceived, albeit misunderstood. People definitely don’t expect the dark and dry kind of brainrot humor, I think. But it keeps me connected. I love all the people I get to meet. It’s something I’ve built that is very true to who I am.
So that’s the long and short of my story that’s still evolving and started with poke. And that’s still one of my favorite love languages. “Here, try this.” Changes lives.
What are your favorite things or people to photograph?
Farms. That is absolutely my favorite. I love to photograph people - I think their faces tell stories. Since childhood I’ve been in love with the Golden Hour of sunset. I love greenhouse lighting too. And my camera never met a plant that it didn’t like. Combining all those things really gets me jazzed.
Favorite restaurant?
The Floridian in St. Augustine - it's a little hole in the wall that caters to locals. It's covered in plants - you could almost miss it.
St. Augustine is one of my favorite cities in the US. It's so old - I love the cobblestone streets and like all the artists have their wares out. It's kind of spooky. It's almost like a New Orleans type of vibe.
At that restaurant I had the best shrimp and grits with cornbread. I'm from Tennessee, so southern food is important to my soul. I just had this melt in your mouth shrimp and grits. It was just everything.
Tell me about your kitchen.
It's definitely a sacred space. It starts with doing the dishes, unfortunately, then wiping down the counters, and then I light candles. That’s my happy place. It’s decorated with gifts from friends and farmers: bottles of apple cider vinegar and syrup, art and pottery, dried oranges on strings, garlic braids, or just rocks, magnets, and little trinkets people have gifted me.
I leave a little offering for the spirits every time I cook! A little bit of salt crystals, sage, or a pour of vinegar or a nice olive oil. It really is my altar and I treat it that way.
How has raising your son affected the way you cook?
It's made me less judgmental of other people's cooking. Not that I ever was in the first place. Being a mom, you just need dinner on the table sometimes. You want something you know they're not gonna cry or have a meltdown over or just not eat.
So, I'm into farm-to-school, you know, and trying to combat picky eating! That’s the name of the game. The exposure method works! It actually changes their palette. It sets them up to like vegetables for the rest of their lives.
My son definitely was exposed to a lot of vegetables from the beginning. We prioritized that, always having mostly veggies on his plate when he was a baby and didn’t really know about other flavors yet. Now he would definitely prefer veggies. His daycare teachers say the same thing. They call him the cucumber monster.
Having fresh vegetables around and the means to provide them was definitely a privilege, though. If you’re keeping your family fed with enough calories, you’re doing something right, and that’s what matters.
I’d like to impart to folks that skills like resourcefulness, enthusiasm, and curiosity with cooking, is way more important, at least to me, than technique or expensive ingredients. We need to make sure that we feel we are encouraging empowerment and resilience with food, and not shame, or pretension.
I don’t think it’s in the spirit of service to assume everyone can eat well all the time. I try to avoid that. There’s a lot of factors that influence eating - not just cost and know-how but time, especially time.
How much stress is that person dealing with? Do they even have the capacity to try something new right now? But I’d like to do something in the realm of offering accessible ways to connect.
What is your take on SNAP or other food assistance programs and how do you think they can be improved?
I finally qualified for SNAP at one of the most uncertain and stressful times in my life. It was such a lifesaver, but the paperwork was horrible. It's hard to think clearly when you’re in survival mode. I’ve definitely been that person. Depending on your experience with the government, it can feel scary or punitive, so you’re fighting trauma responses the entire time. It’s a huge barrier.
I think it’s important to realize that food access has layers. It isn’t just about money and food.
It’s interwoven with emotions, stress, shame and pride. Is there a better way? I don't have the answer.
But I know that everyone eats! Food brings people together, it unites us all. Reaching vulnerable populations, supporting our local food system in the ways that we can, just generally builds community resilience. And we have to help support each other in these ways in these times - even if it’s just eating and sharing foods with one another, like sharing a bite of your poke with your coworker. I recently was introduced to seed gifting culture. That’s awesome! That’s some of the most radical work we could be doing.
For me it’s the color and connection to the earth, to your body and to each other. Food and farm culture has brought me out of some dark spaces. It’s where the light is. I hope I can pay it forward, that I’m a small piece in it.
