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 I had in between lectures.
Maestra Macuilxochitl, Luz Alvarez-Martinez, and Carlos Ruiz-Martinez turned out to […]

Recently a new “restaurant” opened up where I live. This eating establishment, called Cereality, is a franchise with five other locations. It calls itself a “Cereal Bar and Café” and its menu primarily features different kinds of cold cereal that you can mix and match along with a variety of toppings. What’s not to like?

Breaking news and developments, such as contaminated-food outbreaks, Farm Bill milestones, and how the farming community is faring around the world.

Around the world there’s growing talk about food crisis as grain prices soar and supplies plummet. They’re talking food riots. And the American Bakers Association marched on Washington.
Meanwhile, in the breadbasket of the nation (a.k.a. Kansas), the price of bread rose yesterday in its best-known bakery, WheatFields. Nobody rioted.

“Today’s the day,” Thom Leonard announced when […]

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 different ways to turn sourdough starter into bread: some easy, some complicated. […]

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 because it’s so easy to […]

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. Then, while digging through the […]

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 […]

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 a pile of handouts, but it got little press and essentially no public […]

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

There’s a golf course worth of links coming at ya. Fore!
Pennies add up: McDonald’s has reached agreement with a Florida farmworkers organization to pay 1 cent more per pound for the tomatoes it buys from state farms. Think that’s nothing? It’s a 75 percent pay raise for the laborers. Time for Burger King to pony […]

More bad pet food: The pet food recall has been expanded to other wt food brands and dry kibble as well. Boston Globe (via AP) While the AP story says the FDA would not name the manufacturer, the FDA’s website says that Hill’s Pet Nutrition is recalling its Prescription Diet dry food.
Hell no, don’t grow: […]

Dairy Queen here: This is the second guest post from our Berkeley neighbor Marc (bio now available), who’s also been contributing daily to the Digest. Here, Marc — who’s an engineer — engages in a little recreational fact-checking that I for one found fascinating.
[Updated March 20 with caveat on Lundberg Rice and photo credit]
Local vs. […]

Rice flows: Rick Weiss has another excellent feature, this time on rice farmers’ frustration over seeds’ contamination with genetically modified varieties unapproved for human consumption. Biotech proponents are asking “what’s the big deal?” and claiming no harm has come to human health. (But since U.S. genetically modified food isn’t labeled, how can we track its […]

Rogue rice: The USDA has ordered dealers not to sell a long-grain rice seed, Clearfield CL131, for planting because it may have been contaminated by a genetically modified strain. Yep, Bayer’s pesky Liberty strain may have escaped its cellular bonds once again. New York Times
Who you calling a gentleman?: Mother Jones editorial fellow Cameron Scott’s […]