Agriculture
Is Your Local, Organic Food Neither Local Nor Organic?
I hate to be a cynic, but I suppose it was inevitable: With consumers today increasingly willing to pay a premium for local and/or organic food, it was only a matter of time before the scam artists of the world exploited shoppers' good intentions.Just in the last couple of weeks, two separate inves...
October 06, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
Five Ways to Eat Lima Beans
Lima beans used to remind me of a line in a Josh Ritter song: "I'm trying hard to love you / You don't make it easy, babe."You know what I mean, right? That wan, wrinkled skin; that wet-sawdust texture; that hospital-cafeteria smell...those are the lima beans I recall picking out of the "frozen mix...
September 30, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Food in the Raw at the U.S. Botanic Garden
After almost three years of working right down the street, I finally made time to explore the U.S. Botanic Garden on a recent lunch break. I expected mostly flowers, but found a food nerd's Eden: So many of my favorite edibles, in their purest forms! So many tidbits of culinary history and science!...
September 29, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Ways to Eat Ground Cherries
What tastes like a cherry tomato injected with mango and pineapple juice, and looks like an orange pearl encased in a miniature paper lantern?No, I'm not just trying to cram as many fruit references into one sentence as possible. It's a real plant: Physalis pruinosa, aka the "ground cherry."I'd nev...
September 02, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Ways to Eat Okra
Okra's a strange little vegetable, the kind of thing you might not guess was edible if no one told you. Its prickly skin can sting your fingers, and slicing into it reveals little more than seeds and slime. I admit, if okra hadn't been included in our CSA share these past few weeks, I would probabl...
August 26, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Ways to Eat Cucumbers
Lately I have acquired a troop of cucumbers from various friends and acquaintances trying to unload their late-summer garden bounties. I like to toss a few cucumber slices in salads or on sandwiches, but I would have to eat them morning, noon and night to use them all up that way. What else can be ...
August 20, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
A Culinary Tour of "Eat Pray Love"
"I'm having a relationship with my pizza." As Julia Roberts looks over her Neapolitan pizza at her Eat Pray Love co-star, Tuva Novotny, I too feel a pang for the thin, cheesy, luscious display that nearly outshines the Oscar winner. As it turns out, this particular scene was filmed at the famous L’...
August 19, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
Popeye Makes Kids Eat More Vegetables
Remember Popeye? Mr. "I'm strong to the the finish cause I eats my spinach?" The cartoon hasn't aired in the U.S. for several years now, but I bet you know who I'm talking about.Apparently, the classic tough guy can inspire kids to eat their spinach, too. A paper just published in the Australian jo...
August 12, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Farmers Market Finds: Purple Long Beans
Walking past a farmers market on my lunch break last week, I did a doubletake at what looked like a basket of baby snakes for sale.Getting closer, I was relieved to see that the tangle of dark and sinuous shapes was in fact a lone quart of unusually long beans. I picked one up and held it up to the...
August 10, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
The Surprising Origins of Fried Green Tomatoes
The first time I, like a lot of Americans, heard of fried green tomatoes was when a movie by that name came out in 1991. Based on a novel by Fannie Flagg called Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, it starred Mary Louise Parker, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy in a fe...
August 06, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
A Summer Reading List for Food Lovers
It's a sticky August afternoon, and the family members are facing their third day of vacation in a tiny beach town. The thrill of splashing in the surf and crafting sand castles has faded, replaced by streaks of sunburn around the edges of swimsuits and sandal straps. ("I told you to put lotion eve...
August 05, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
The Rise of Urban Farming
Grow fruits and vegetables in city towers? Advocates give a green thumbs up
August 2010 |
By T. A. Frail
Rosamond Naylor on Feeding the World
The economist discusses the stresses that climate change and a greater world population will have on our food supply
August 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Game-Changing Crops That Could Help Feed the Hungry
Food security experts say these crops, if grown more widely, could help feed the hungry
August 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
The Buzz About Shade-Grown Coffee
I think it's time we had a talk about the birds and the bees. Over coffee, naturally.No, really. Did you know that the shady forests where coffee is traditionally grown in Latin America provide a critical habitat for many migratory birds? Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has an informative slide s...
July 28, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Ways to Eat Tomatillos
Somehow, I lived for 30 years without tomatillos, but there's no going back now. While I was on my way back from South Africa last weekend, my husband was on his own to select the vegetables for our CSA share (some programs pick for you, but ours lets us choose at the farmstand). When I returned, h...
July 22, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Radish Pods and Other Multi-Tasking Vegetables
Last week I tasted a vegetable I didn't know existed: radish pods. They looked a little like short pea pods or green beans but were more delicate and crunchier, and had the pungent bite of a radish, though milder. In fact, they are the seed pods of a radish plant that has been allowed to flower and...
July 21, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
Cross-Pollination: Fruit Trees as Metaphor
A nice side benefit of getting married (other than, you know, getting to share your life with the person you love) is that people give you thoughtful and useful gifts.One thoughtful and useful gift my now-husband and I recently received was a pair of young apple trees, which we have planted in the ...
July 07, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
A Brief History of Popsicles
Are you as hot as we are? Temperatures are hitting the triple digits in D.C. this week, which makes me want to say something clever about third digits and obscenities, but my brain has melted past the point of cleverness and seems to be functioning as little more than a nerve center for "Me Want Ic...
July 07, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
The Price of Corn
Aaron Wolff, the director and producer of two documentaries about the consequences of corn being America's most subsidized crop, stopped by the Lake Placid Film Forum this past weekend for a Q&A and a screening of his films King Corn (2006) and its follow-up, Big River (2009).The original film ...
June 16, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
