Takoma Kitchens

Takoma Kitchens sold its first item from a card table at the Takoma Park Farmers Market in 1984. The market was then in its infancy, so our meager offering -- a couple of pies and a few loaves of bread -- didn't look entirely out of place. Today, almost two decades and many thousands of customers later, Takoma Kitchens produces more than fifty separate items, from Sunflower and Seven-Grain Bread to Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies and Rich Cream Scones. We sell our goods at several area farmers' markets, including the Arlington Farmers Market, the Department of Agriculture market and the Montgomery County Farm Women's Coop, as well as to wholesale accounts and several privately-run markets operated by the Twin Springs Fruit Farm.

The Takoma Park market, however, always has been our best market and first love. We enjoy its community atmosphere and have come to regard many of our customers and fellow producers as friends. And, of course, we shop there loyally ourselves. It has been a good many years since we bought a tomato elsewhere.

The origins of Takoma Kitchens have been described in Food Finds, a delightful book about America's local foods by Allison Engel and Margaret Engel. "In past years, many homemakers were Renaissance cooks. They could bake, can, preserve foods, and undertake exquisite meal preparations. Today, if people have time for culinary endeavors, they specialize. Louise Swartzwalder, the founder of Takoma Kitchens, is the food equivalent of a utility outfielder. Her... firm started out with unique pies; moved into condiments, tea cakes, cookies, and preserves; and now offers unusual breads and muffins and handles full-event catering. A former journalist and political operative, Louise draws on her culinary roots, having grown up in a farm family in Central Ohio. Her mother, Beatrice, taught her the basics of baking, sausage making, preserving, and feeding farm hands. Her daughter's customers throughout the Washington, D.C. area are now the fortunate beneficiaries of those lessons."

As it has since the beginning, Takoma Kitchens is committed to the production and sale of wholesome foods at reasonable prices. We bake from scratch with fresh, natural ingredients; there are no additives or preservatives in anything we sell.

Takoma Kitchens is still owned and operated by Louise Swartzwalder and her husband, John Hyde, who are longtime residents of Takoma Park. In addition to running Takoma Kitchens, Louise manages her family's farmland, Crestwood Family Farms, in Ashland County, Ohio. She grows vegetables, herbs and flowers which she sells at a farmers market in Shaker Heights, Ohio. She is a frequent consultant to overseas agricultural projects as a volunteer for the Citizens Network for Foreign Affairs. Her most recent trip, February 2002, was work with a farmers' cooperative in Moldova.

John Hyde, also a former journalist, is executive director of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, a thirty-year-old grant-making organization, and is co-author of American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace, a biography of our country's greatest agriculture secretary and a prophetic voice of Twentieth Century progressivism.

Takoma Kitchens is located at 1812 East-West Highway,Hyattsville, on the edge of Takoma Park at the intersection of East-West Highway and Riggs Road. We may be contacted by phone at 301-422-0097 or by e-mail at

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