According to an article in Sunday’s New York Times, the increased levels of carbon dioxide that characterize global climate change have given weeds — better defined as those plants “out of place” — a supernatural advantage. So what’s a gardener to do when faced with a bed of weeds? The answer is simple: eat them.

Going on a stroll with a friend leads to a two-hour-long skillshare that reverses the usual generational roles: Fuddy-duddy me tries to explain RSS feeds, the point of Facebook (not sure there is one), and things like Digg to the 26-year-old. In turn, she shares knowledge gleaned from botany classes and, she confessed, years of reading seed catalogs at bedtime, about the edible things I’ve been walking past every day.

This week was Noshette’s birthday, and among the many things we did to celebrate was to have dinner at Les Jardins Sauvages, which in English means "the wild gardens", a woodland table restaurant in St.Roch de l’Achigan. (Since I no longer go by the name "Nosher", Noshette will now be known as "Megan".) The 30 […]

Wednesdays are always a busy day for the Digest, but this one might be a record. Hope you’re hungry, people, because there’s an 18-course meal’s worth of links today.
Get thee back into the lab, FDA!: Biotech reporter Denise Caruso has a kick-ass top-notch op-ed about why the FDA’s science regarding the safety of meat and […]

It’s finally warming up here, so I went for a walk on my day off today. Some of the citrus trees in my Oakland neighborhood are covered in ripe fruit! So I stole foraged some Meyer lemons and some oranges. (Hey, if the tree grows next to a public sidewalk, and there’s fruit all over […]

Two weeks ago, during a rosemary-filled day of cooking, I picked and chopped more rosemary than was needed. The rosemary came from the smaller bush outside our back door.
I like fresh herbs over dried herbs, and I didn’t want to dry the already chopped leaves or throw them away. Fortunately, we have a small, airtight […]

A former roommate had a simple rule about home brewing beer: Drink your mistakes. This was not the easiest rule to live by, but on one occasion he followed his rule and drank most of a 5 gallon batch of pale ale. Another roommate and I helped, a little, but it was […]

On Sunday, Man of La Muncha and I went to the Ballard Farmers’ Market. Each of us had a goal - he wanted to find back fat to pursue his goal of making lard, and I wanted to talk to the foragers and find out more about the found food that they sell.
Once we got to the […]

The long Labor Day weekend began when I took the Butter Bitch to the airport and returned home to paint inside our house. I did not think about today’s post until Sunday evening, when the bathroom had been painted and the closet was scraped clean. I thought of making lard, or buying lard, […]

It was going to be the quintessential blog posting.
Sir Loin and I were set to spend the whole weekend up at the house of Madame La Vache (otherwise known as the grandmother of Miss Steak). This other blog entry I was going to write fell through, so I thought, well, Madame La Vache has […]

New York Times*: Transforming a sod-covered front lawn into an “edible estate” displeases neighbors and flouts American class conventions.
New York Times*: Epic feature about the fearless foragers of morel mushrooms — as fascinating as ”The Orchid Thief.”
New York Times Select**: Joe Nocera’s column for the business section says the public John Mackey-Michael Pollan debate is […]

I’ve read the foraging exploits of the other Ethicureans with some jealousy, but our CSA box has kept us too busy to roam the neighborhood for ripening fruit. There are cherry trees 4 blocks west of us, but we haven’t walked past them since the cherry blossoms started decorating the sidewalks and streets with […]

I’ve been stealing from my neighbors. And I don’t feel at all guilty.
For one thing, I doubt they’d care, if they even noticed. Ever since I started focusing on eating more locally, I’ve been staking out the fruit trees and noting where all the wild fennel, lavender, and rosemary grow on my jogs around our […]