Dining Features

[vc_row class=”bb-row”][vc_column][vc_column_text] On a Northeast Iowa farm and in backyards across the nation, Seed Savers Exchange preserves heirloom varietals and their stories for future generations. In 1975, Diane Ott Whealy received a gift from her grandfather: the seeds of the German Pink tomato and Grandpa Ott’s morning glory. Whealy wrote a letter to Mother Earth […]

[vc_row class=”bb-row”][vc_column][vc_column_text] On their Linn County farm, Lea and Denny Rehberg raise shrimp alongside heirloom pigs, blazing a trail for a growing regional industry. Overnight, Styrofoam coolers of 20,000 post-larval shrimp arrive from the Florida Keys to the Rehberg family farm in Walker, Iowa. “They’re about the size of your eyelash when you get ‘em,” […]

[vc_separator color=”orange” align=”align_center” border_width=”4″] Cooking, teaching and writing poetry have this in common: All are considered “women’s work” until the elite tier of each is reached. Then? It’s a man’s world, baby. Gender disparity skyrockets. Far more published poets are men, as are college professors, and the same is true amongst chefs and restaurateurs. But […]

By Erin McMeen [vc_separator color=”orange” align=”align_center” border_width=”4″] What is your favorite drink to make for yourself? Brenton Thompson (Northside Bistro): I tend to drink a lot of whiskey and whiskey cocktails at home. I like to make variations of Old Fashioneds and Manhattans, but it really depends on the season and what I have in […]

By Alicia Ambler Local Foods and Planning Specialist Shanti Sellz leverages Iowa City’s slow food ethos and penchant for entrepreneurship to deliver fresh produce throughout Johnson county. [vc_separator color=”orange” align=”align_center” border_width=”4″] Whether it’s Iowa City’s bustling Saturday farmers market, our seasonal celebrations of local foods or our thriving collection of school gardens, Iowa-grown foods are […]

By Frankie Schneckloth & Courtenay Bouvier Milton Creamery’s famous Prairie Breeze isn’t the kind of perfection one can will into existence. You need a little luck—and a lot of community—for that. [vc_separator color=”orange” align=”align_center” border_width=”4″] “You don’t pick paths. You follow the trail,” says Rufus Musser, who describes his Milton Creamery, producer of the beloved […]

By Cristina Ortiz [vc_separator color=”orange” align=”align_center” border_width=”4″] On a sunny summer day in 2006, I found myself in the vestibule of a Catholic Church in Marshalltown, Iowa helping to tie the underlayer of a giant pink hoopskirt which encased a very excited 15-year-old girl. The enormously poofy skirt was the stuff of small children’s princess […]