Last Saturday was like a national holiday for my up-and-coming Oakland neighborhood, the Dimond district — or, as the SF Chronicle noted this week, our “decidedly unglamorous” ‘hood. Well, all of us unglamorous folk turned out in large numbers to celebrate the long-awaited opening of Farmer Joe’s Marketplace — a locally owned grocery store […]

Here is what we are reading as we mourn Argentina’s loss to Germany:
Washington Post: Heavy rains and flood deliver terrible blow to Eastern Shore farmers’ livelihoods, including drowning tens of thousands of chickens in closed coops. (DQ editorializing: Why didn’t they open the doors, I wonder? They would have floated….I find this unbearably sad.)
People magazine: […]

Fordhall Community Land Initiative announced their success in raising enough funds to buy the farm and set it aside for use as an organic farm, wildlife preserve, and community resource. As noted earlier in the week, the Fordhall is a landmark British organic farm whose tenants needed £800,000 to buy the land and save […]

It’s Saturday and the Butter Bitch and I are preparing to do something slightly out of character: Watch sports, drink Argentinean wine and eat steak from Skagit River Ranch.
I occasionally watch sports, mostly playoffs and championships, while the Butter Bitch shows little interest and routinely confuses teams. This year, she revealed a strong […]

Common Ground Magazine: A profile of blacksmith, philosopher and cook Angelo Garro, who guided Michael Pollan through boar hunting in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
Washington Post: A small meat-packing firm is suing the USDA to be allowed to conduct their own tests for Mad Cow disease. The USDA contends that the tests would be for marketing […]

Up until now, my experience with “the range” has been derived entirely from John Wayne movies, Elmer Kelton novels, and the Little House on the Prairie series I loved as a child. So when I saw a tour advertised on the Marin Sun Farms website, I quickly grabbed the chance to gain some firsthand experience. […]

New York Times: Amish farmer from Mount Hope, Ohio, fights law forbidding him to sell raw milk from his dairy.
San Francisco Chronicle: Believe it or not, you’ll love knowing what’s inside these hot dogs.
Idaho Mt. Express: Wood River Valley, Idaho, is getting on the S/O/L/E Food train.
Washington Post: There’s nothing new for the faithful in […]

Austin is lousy with Farmer’s Markets. And by lousy I mean in that Holden Caulfield way that they’re all over the place. According to the United States Department of Agriculture website, there are ten. Last Saturday morning, I went to the South Austin market, as well as the downtown farmer’s market.

I was surprised to find […]

The Scotsman: Organic beer and wine have been around for a number of years, but now there is organic Scotch. Slainte!
Washington Post: Farmers and consumers fight battle against organic milk from feedlots.
In Business (by way of Organic Consumers Alliance): Hey Portlanders! OCA has reprinted an excellent article discussing the business model of Portland’s […]

Note: This post was to be titled “Goodbye to Ro-o-sie” but Miss Steak beat me to the punch. This post takes a similar look at the Seattle Whole Foods.

We stopped shopping at Whole Foods when we moved to our new house in March. We had divided our grocery dollars between WF and Puget […]

During our daily review of news sites for our digest, Dairy Queen discovered that two siblings are selling shares to save their father’s organic farm in England. The farm is in north Shropshire, a county made famous by the poems of A. E. Housman, and it has followed organic practices for over 50 years. […]

Austin American-Statesman: A certified organic garden at a Montessori School in Texas helps combat “nature deficit disorder” in tots.
Marin Independent Journal: Profile of Liz Cunninghame, whose Clark Summit Farm produces pasture-raised eggs, beef, and pork.
Chicago Tribune: The Chicago-based Institute of Food Technologists has announced that antibiotics used in the conventional food supply pose no […]

I was distressed to learn, a few months back, that Rosie, my darling guilt-free Rosie was just a withered up old hag of a hen. Well, maybe not a hag, but at least a harpie of some kind, definitely a shrewish bird, living as she does in giant sheds that don’t REALLY get her out […]

Frank Bruni’s piece in today’s NYT captures the schizophrenia and confusion surrounding meat consumption in the current dietgeist (as Dairy Queen calls it). Free-range isn’t really free any more, lobsters suffer in their holding tanks and will no longer be offered for sale and slaughter at Whole Foods, foie gras is under attack, wild caught […]

I’ve been ruminating a lot lately about how different I feel, just four months after embarking on this S/O/L/E food quest and becoming what my sister calls a “food dork.” I and — to a slightly lesser extent — my husband (the lab rat known as Potato Non Grata) radically changed what and how we […]