Section » Grains

Tracking the co-evolution of grass and humanity

By Ethicurean • on March 12, 2010

High on grass: "We live in the age of grass," writes Olivia Judson, a research fellow in biology at Imperial College London, on the New York Times' Opinionator blog. Indeed, some of the crops that helped make humans an agricultural creature and create our complex civilization are grasses: wheat, rice, sugar cane, and corn, to name a few. Over the course

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Buckwheat and see: Growing my own grain

By Jennifer M. aka Baklava Queen • on September 30, 2009

When it comes to my gardening, I tend to have a lot of big ideas and not nearly enough space in which to implement them. And the more I try to source my food locally, the more I want to try growing things myself to fill in the gaps of what I can't find at the local farmers market. Last fall, when I picked

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Asia could teach U.S. some new corn tricks

By Marc R. aka Mental Masala • on May 22, 2009

Thanks to fertile Midwestern plains, commodity-focused agricultural policy, a foreign policy that makes cheap petroleum a high priority, and an innovative agricultural industry, Americans are truly the 'people of the corn.' As the film "King Corn" and the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" have well documented,

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Well worth the wheat: Gene Logsdon’s “Small-Scale Grain Raising”

By Jennifer M. aka Baklava Queen • on February 4, 2009

As the price of flour and other grain-based foods has risen, creative-minded people have begun to consider growing their own wheat, corn, rye, and other grains. Groovy

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Loafing in a cold climate

By Jennifer M. aka Baklava Queen • on January 25, 2009

Winter weather has provided us with a never-ending topic of conversation lately: the storms pummeling the upper Midwest, the guesses as to how much those storms might repeat themselves here in northern Ohio, how

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Snapshot from Slow Food Nation: Native American plants in the Victory Garden

By Bonnie Azab Powell • on September 3, 2008

I had intended to do some "man in the garden" interviews while I hung around the Victory Garden watching the crowds come through. But my first set of victims were so interesting I talked to them for the entire half hour

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The Cereality show, coming to a college town near you!

By Guest • on May 28, 2008

This guest post is by Tracy Lerman, who likes to cook food from the Santa Cruz farmers market and ride her bike by the ocean. In her spare time Tracy works at the Organic Farming Research Foundation doing policy advocacy and organizing. Recently

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Digest - News: Scary wheat fungus spreading, food prices climbing, don’t blame the soda (right)

By Ethicurean • on March 17, 2008

When it grains it pours: A dangerous new fungus with the ability to destroy entire wheat fields has been detected in Iran, says the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Up to 80% of all Asian and African wheat varieties are susceptible to the fungus, which can be transmitted across continents by wind.

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Bread rises, and not just from yeast

By Janet • on March 14, 2008

Around the world there’s growing talk about food crisis as

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Bake on the wild side: Part 2, the bread

By Marc R. aka Mental Masala • on February 17, 2008

In part 1 of "Bake on the wild side," I wrote about how to create a sourdough starter and some of the science behind it. In this post I'll tell how I used the starter to make loaves of bread. There are many

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Exploring the pastabilities

By Jennifer M. aka Baklava Queen • on February 9, 2008

I love pasta. There's just no getting around that simple fact. Others may avoid carbohydrates like the plague, but I find that a meal isn't quite complete without something a little starchy to hold everything together. An old-fashioned trencherwoman, that's me. And pasta ranks at the top of the list

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In defense of corn

By Bonnie Azab Powell • on January 4, 2008

It's cold, gray, and raining buckets here in Northern California, causing me to feel distinctly snacky. Problem is, the SOLE food lifestyle doesn't really support the quick, salty, fatty comfort food like I crave right now. I eyed a persimmon – too healthy. A couple of walnuts failed to satisfy.

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Bake on the wild side: Part 1, the sourdough starter

By Marc R. aka Mental Masala • on December 12, 2007

I love to bake bread. It can be a messy process, requires a lot of patience, and rarely results in bread as good as what Bay Area bread wizards like Acme and Vital Vittles sell at many nearby markets. But that's OK with me — the process is as important as the product. Bread making can be nearly

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Pharmaceutical rice stirs little dust in Kansas

By Janet • on December 1, 2007

A frustrated Dan Nagengast, executive director of the Kansas Rural Center, said after a recent forum on pharmaceutical crops that opponents needed to take the fight somewhere else. Some 35 to 40 people attended the forum in Topeka on Nov. 14, which provided

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Digest: The scoop on China’s corner-cutting, Mexico goes GM, chocolate label reasoning

By Ethicurean • on April 30, 2007

NEWS Be afraid. Be very afraid: The New York Times goes to Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, and gets some hair-raising real dirt on China's practices regarding the chemical that probably killed hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. pets. For years, producers of animal feed

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