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The spirit is willing, and the fresh is weekly: Review of “A Year on the Garden Path”
For the past few weeks, I've been watching the snow drift down with deceptive lightness, only to accumulate in deep piles (18" and counting here in northeastern Ohio) that have well and truly buried any remotely green thing on the ground. While it's lovely to sit inside and watch winter's show, I also find myself reaching for the seed catalogs. Winter
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When times get larder: “Food Security for the Faint of Heart” reviewed
The potential for disaster surrounds us every day. The aftershocks of the earthquake in Haiti may seem too big for many Americans to grasp,
Sharon, the bounty!: A review of Astyk’s “Independence Days”
Ever since the idea of going locavore, or eating local on 100-mile diets, tiptoed into the mainstream a couple of years ago, more people have chosen to support their local farmers markets and to eat fresh food in season. The old chorus continues, however: "What can a locavore eat in the winter?" Well,
In “Fat of the Land,” forager Lang Cook tells how rooted food is to place
High school date nights found my boyfriend and I parked at the edge of Puget Sound, where daytime low tides enticed dozens of clam diggers to the tide flats. We called our sessions by the unintentionally indecent name "clam digging." High school was the last time I'd made out clamming until a recent
This space is preserved: Checking out “Canning and Preserving Your Own Harvest”
Come summer, I dream of the carefree days of my childhood, when endless sunshine meant days spent outdoors or trips to the lake or just a general sense of freedom from drudgery. I dream of those, of course, because I now work through the summer and spend a good deal of my free time working in the garden
Just say YIMBY: Weed expert Nancy Gift talks about lawns for dinner
By Holly Hickman vs. Recently, a man I know sprayed his front and back lawns with a brand of weed killer he'd bought from the
“Food, Inc.” the book: Picking up where the documentary left off
By Joshua J. Biggley Summer blockbusters are often contrived, schlocky representations of the books on which they are
“Dirt”-y movie tells how we’ve sold our soils
The last page of every issue of Edible San Francisco contains this anonymous quotation: "Despite its artistic pretensions and its many accomplishments, humankind
The lesson of ‘less’: Why ‘The End of the Line’ seafood documentary doesn’t go far enough
By Twilight Greenaway I walked out of the screening of “The End of the Line” feeling deeply uneasy. Most of my discomfort had been carefully orchestrated by the film’s director, Rupert Murray, who filled the 80 minutes with straight-talking scientists and
I can, you can, we all can!: Essential books for preserving seasonal bounty
Well, that sure happened fast. One day I was bundling up in a coat to head outside, and the next thing you know, the weather turned downright summery here in northeastern Ohio. The early crops I planted at the beginning of April are starting to overwhelm me with their bounty — loads of lettuce, reams
Who’s afraid of Big Bad Agribiz? Not “Food Inc.” — but eaters and farmers may be
You've most likely heard about "Food, Inc.," the new documentary about the U.S. industrial food system. (Watch trailer, embedded above right.) The buzz for the film is intense, amplified by an aggressive marketing campaign
Chilling out: A review of “Fresh: A Perishable History”
Locavores like me live for the local farmers market, not just for the conversations with the farmers, but also for the wide variety of fresh,
Meet menhaden - before this ecologically critical fish vanishes
By Alice Friedemann Ever heard of menhaden? Probably not, although perhaps you're familiar with the fish’s other names: bunker, pogies, mossbacks, bugmouths, alewifes, and fat-backs. You may be surprised to learn they’re the most important fish in the Atlantic and Gulf waters. Menhaden are the vacuum
Review: Real Food For Healthy Kids cookbook
I talk a lot of smack about sustainable food. About the unexpected pleasures of farmer’s markets, about voting with one’s fork, about "local economies" this and "food miles" that. But here’s my dirty little secret: it wasn’t that long ago that I fed my daughter a steady diet of chicken nuggets,
