Agriculture
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
Randall Grahm on Why Wine's Terroir Matters
Through the Smithsonian Resident Associates, I had the pleasure of meeting renowned California winemaker Randall Grahm at a tasting event last week. He discussed the idea that some wines uniquely express the place, or terroir, where they were made."It's time for us in California to start taking ser...
June 15, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Ways to Eat Strawberries
I grew up in Southern California, partly in Orange County, which at the time still had nearly as many strawberry fields as shopping centers. I remember looking out at the rows of low plants and feeling bad for the migrant farm workers hunched over picking off the berries in the hot sun. All the sam...
June 09, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
Nourishing the Planet: Encouraging News from Africa
I've been getting weekly e-mails lately from someone named Danielle Nierenberg about a project called Nourishing the Planet. To be honest, I tend to ignore most of the newsletters and unsolicited press releases that find their way to my inbox, so I didn't pay much attention at first. But now that I...
June 08, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Hay Fever: Goat Farming and Cheesemaking in Vermont
Do you ever dream of retiring to some sort of quiet, rural paradise to raise a pretty little herd of goats and make gourmet cheese? I'll confess that I have.Well, that idyllic vision got sullied with reality this week when I picked up a new book called "Hay Fever: How Chasing a Dream on a Vermont F...
June 02, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Inviting Writing: Fear of Artichoke-ing
Ready for another chapter of Inviting Writing? Our theme this month is "food and fear." Some people need food to get over certain fears; others need to get over their fear of certain foods. And some people, like writer Elizabeth Bastos (aka blogger Goody Bastos), have rather frightening imagination...
June 01, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
American Food Posters From World War I and II
Cory Bernat is the creator of an intriguing online exhibit of American food posters related to World Wars I and II, culled from the National Agricultural Library's collection. Blogger Amanda Bensen recently spoke with her about the project. What kind of messages about food was the government send...
May 28, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Five Ways to Eat Asparagus
I'm crazy about asparagus. I've loved it since childhood, when a wise adult whispered to me that it was a powerful source of vitamin C—the secret stuff that makes adults smarter and stronger than kids, they explained conspiratorially. Being the sort of impatient kid who that appealed to (funny how ...
May 25, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Stinging Nettle Soup
There's a restaurant in northwest D.C. called Blue Ridge (the brainchild of chef Barton Seaver) that I enjoy because it focuses on local, seasonal, sustainably sourced ingredients without coming across as self-righteous. It's the kind of place where waiters wear jeans and serve popcorn in brown pap...
May 04, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Honey Bees Still Struggling
America's colonies are being severely taxed, and it could have serious implications for our future.No, I'm not trying to start a revolution; I'm talking about bees. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service has just released a new survey about the health of managed honey bee colonies nationwide, and...
April 29, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Dandelions—From Lawn to Lunch
Depending on your perspective, the little dandelion flowers that dot green lawns with yellow this time of year can be a cheerful sign of warmer days, a pesky weed to be destroyed or, once they've transformed into downy orbs, wish-fulfillment predictors.To others, they represent free lunch. Dandelio...
April 22, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
What's Your Beef? Grass-Fed and Other Beef Terminology
Have you had a chance to read the April issue of Smithsonian yet? I recommend "Breeding the Perfect Bull," a wonderfully written feature by Jeanne Marie Laskas about a family of cattle ranchers in Texas. Judging from readers' response, she really captured the flavor of the modern cowboy's lifestyle...
April 08, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Breeding the Perfect Bull
A Texas cattleman used genetic science to breed his masterpiece – a near-perfect Red Angus bull. Then nature took its course
April 2010 |
By Jeanne Marie Laskas
Cesar Chavez: A Life Devoted to Helping Farm Workers
According to proponents of local, organic and/or humane foods, we all "vote with our forks" three (give or take) times a day. It's true that consumers have a certain amount of power to influence food producers to change their ways. This idea predates the locavore movement; some of its most effectiv...
March 31, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
How Food Shaped Humanity
A few months ago I wrote about the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham, which claimed that eating cooked food was the central factor that allowed us to evolve into Homo sapiens. I recently finished another book, An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage, that essen...
March 26, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
In a Pickle
Salty and crunchy cucumber pickles have been a mainstay in American refrigerators for decades. But The Daily Beast recently listed pickling as one of its top trends for 2010. And the trend isn't just for cucumbers—you can pickle just about anything. At the restaurant where I work, we serve pickled ...
March 09, 2010 |
By Abby Callard
