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Beet me up: Six summery ways to enjoy the sweetest root vegetable

By • on May 28, 2012

I peek under our hoop house garden bed to check the progress of the hundred beets we planted early in the winter. The greens look healthy and strong. For two months I have resisted the urge to harvest baby beets early. On occasion, I did harvest a few beets under the auspices of "thinning the bed." (Sometimes thinning a garden bed is necessary to give

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Minding common ground: “Poly-farming” in northeast Ohio

By • on September 27, 2011

Just about any road I take that leads me out of Wooster, Ohio, very quickly guides me past vast fields of corn or soybeans. Agriculture plays a vital role in Wayne County’s economy, and for several

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Helping out the Milk Board’s new PMS campaign

By • on July 17, 2011

The California Milk Processor's Board, which brought us the Got Milk? campaign, urges men this week to tell their cranky, about-to-menstruate women: "You really need to drink more milk." Men can get their PMS education on

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Goats: An overlooked pasture-raised animal

By • on June 12, 2011

Goats grazing in Ethiopia (iStockphoto) Goat meat is already very popular around the world – the Washington Post claims that goat makes up almost 70 percent of the red meat eaten

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Endangered, eh? Canada Scientists Confirm Bluefin Tuna Are in Deep Trouble

By • on May 21, 2011

By Catherine Kilduff, Center for Biological Diversity * Updated on June 2, 2011 by Marc R.* It’s official: We really are fishing to extinction a fish that has sustained us for millennia, the bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). Last week Canada’s scientists declared the Atlantic bluefin tuna endangered,

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Highlights and questions from the Natural Products Expo West trade show

By • on May 6, 2011

In March I attended the Natural Products Expo West, one of the largest trade shows for the natural products industry. Produced by New Hope Natural Media, the show had hundreds of exhibitors promoting their products

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Looking for Mr. Goodfish: Chefs aim to expand our seafood horizons

By • on February 18, 2011

In the chapter on New York in Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe comes down hard on the Big

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Jimmy Stewart, cults, and a lot of broken glass: Remembering Straus Family Creamery’s opening day

By • on February 15, 2011

By Michael Straus Pictures from opening night at Straus Family Creamery, February 4, 1994. (That's me with the goatee.) Straus Family Creamery recently turned 17, and I started thinking back to those crazy times. In 1989, my older brother Albert, who’d been managing the farm and doing some pretty

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San Francisco sustainable restaurants have a blind spot for seafood

By • on February 1, 2011

In an ideal world, when a restaurant tells you that it serves “sustainable seafood,” you could have some faith that the claim is true, that the chefs and buyers know exactly what they are getting and the issues around how it was caught. The seafood situation in the famously eco-friendly San Francisco

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Tipping sacred cows: Reviewing “Meat: A Benign Extravagance”

By • on January 31, 2011

Mainstream culture and news abound with broad statements about our food system and the choices we make about what we put on the dinner table. Surely you’ve heard that if you want to save

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Boycotting bluefin isn’t enough — time to turn on the siren

By • on January 11, 2011

Critics of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas often say that the acronym ICCAT might better stand for the “International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna.” At its most recent meeting, ICCAT lived up to that derisive nickname by

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Two cookbooks give winter vegetables a starring role

By • on January 1, 2011

The temperatures have plunged below the freezing point, the first major snow of the season has blanketed the ground, and winter is officially here. Baby, it’s cold outside,

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Massive gingerbread house recall a reminder that food safety starts in the gut

By • on December 28, 2010

Grist (where I am the food editor) just got a late entry to our Scariest Food of 2010 contest: Gingerbread houses.

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Olney Friends School in Ohio grows food to grow enrollment

By • on December 9, 2010

The farm-to-school movement has been gaining ground lately as advocates encourage administrators to bring more local food into school cafeterias. But at Olney

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Q&A with Michele Simon — activist, attorney, badass

By • on November 14, 2010

It's always fun to talk with someone who has such a sense of purpose that she doesn't feel the need to make nice. Michele Simon is one of those people. Let me be clear: Simon, a public health attorney for the Marin Institute, and author of Appetite

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