I spent part of a beautiful sunny afternoon last weekend watching a documentary about a grocery store.
That’s right, a documentary about a grocery store.
Some of you might be thinking that I saw Robert Greenwald’s "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price" or some other muckraking exposé. No, this was "Eat at Bill’s," an inspiring, cheerful, […]

So of course, I decided that’s what I had to bring to this potluck: not only a dish I’d never made before, but a thing I’d barely even tried and was pretty sure I wouldn’t like, plus that most people wouldn’t want to sample….

A big thanks to all who came by and visited with the chickens and bought eggs yesterday — I think it went very well. In hindsight, I’m just really glad the rain waited til today, as that would have been a big drag.

[Updated on 9/22 to include positive sentiments from farmers about farmers markets]
Just as I was thinking that the Bay Area is enjoying a golden age of farmers markets, with a multitude of farmers markets bringing fresh, local food directly from the farm to the consumer, reality drops in: farmers markets can be an inefficient […]

Tomorrow is Park(ing) Day in San Francisco, and Phil Ferrato and I are taking over a space in South of Market usually reserved for a car and turning it in to an urban-chicken habitat, complete with two lovely Gold-Laced Wyandotte hens and an Eglu.

Which Bay Area company with a young, hip-yet-geeky staff has made a point of serving local, organically grown food since 1997? Nope, not Google.

RSS readers might not display the flashy Pictobrowser slide show below, so click through if you want to see us do the can-can.

Yesterday was Labor Day, and Marc, Rachel, and I stocked up like locavorean squirrels for the winter. Well, that’s what I thought the plan was. But 8 hours, 50 pounds of tomatoes, 15 […]

The surroundings of Alemany Farm in San Francisco do not bring forth feelings of pastoral tranquillity. On one side is 12 lanes of high-speed traffic (Interstate 280 and Alemany Blvd), which showers the area with waves of noise. On another side, a large housing complex — a vast space of buildings, cars and […]

Sustainable Table, the nonprofit responsible for the indespensible Eat Well Guide to sustainable farms, restaurants, markets, and more around the U.S., and the proud sponsor of the most awesome Meatrix videos, is rolling across America right now in a biodiesel-powered bus.

A round-up of insightful and informative features & blog posts we think Ethicurean readers will enjoy.

Honorary streets are popular in many cities–New York has Joey Ramone Place (E. 2nd Street at The Bowery) and Peter Jennings Way (66th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park), San Francisco has Lawrence Ferlinghetti Way (near City Lights Books), and Chicago has Bob Fosse Way (Montrose and Paulina), to name a few.
Now it appears […]

Digest: Milk ads restricted, worrisome hormones in all milk, the oyster wars

Pub Brief summary (Pub) Brief summary (Pub) Brief summary (Pub) Brief summary (Pub) Brief summary (Pub) News Michigan fights manure tsunami: Michigan has introduced bills to cut down factory farm pollution. Concentrated animal feeding operations in the state spread more than 4 billion pounds of untreated manure on farm fields each year — animal feces and urine laced with hundreds of toxic chemicals and potentially deadly pathogens — because the state Legislature in the 1990s made farms exempt from most environmental laws…. (New York Times) Features The Monopoly game: Tom Philpott on how, like most of the orange juice it produces, the U.S. food system is highly concentrated — and what that seemingly unstoppable trend is doing to small farmers in both the meat and vegetable industries.

There will be two Digests today — one for all the food sections (below) and one later this afternoon for other news.
I’m Glad and I Eat Frugally: Carol Ness at the Chronicle heads a great feature package about the upcoming Pennywise Eat Local Challenge, in which participants set out to prove that eating locally (and […]

People who enjoy sausage and respect the law should not watch either being made.
That curt assessment is usually attributed to 19th-century statesman Otto von Bismarck, and I can certainly agree with him about the second part. For example, it’s hard to see how all the maneuvering and wheeling-and-dealing and horse trading going on around the […]