Posted inFood & Drink

Recasting Corn

This summer I visited a Democratic meet-up in Marion, Iowa, where a new candidate for Secretary of Agriculture is looking to rebrand our state’s chief export. But not through marketing–through a new vision of sustainable agriculture, one that posits the problems presented by an over-reliance on fossil fuels as an opportunity to reevaluate the future of farming in Iowa.

Posted inFood & Drink

Crazy Ates

I ate peppers, I ate celery, I ate arugula… I made this dish one night after a day of ranting to myself that A) how the hell am I supposed to get the recommended 9 servings a day of fruits and vegetables and B) what can I do to make celery actually taste *good*? My […]

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The Hops: Backyard Brew

The ability to chug a whole bottle of PBR in one mighty draught only impresses your peers for so long. What was formerly an athletic display of swilling prowess becomes something sad, a little desperate. It is a sign of the need to grow up, difficult as that can be to accept. So how is […]

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Morel Me, Please

A walk in the woods in the heartland’s early spring is intrinsically rewarding, but while you are enjoying those first few sunny days after a nourishing spring rain, why not look for things that can feed your belly as well as your soul? The woodlands of the upper Midwest are teeming with gourmet goodies in […]

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Hoagies & Grinders

Lunch-lady-land cafeterias in the U.S. public school system conjure dreams of Early Cuising Education. It’s early in the morning the day after a very busy Valentine’s weekend in the restaurant. I’m grumpy and sore and cleaning out the walk-in refrigerator while feeding a nasty NPR jones I’ve been contending with for a couple decades – […]

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Growing Excitement

Just about everyone I know has been pouring over seed catalogs for the last month. Eagerness to plant supplants many other priorities and they begin rifling through each newly arrived issue like a 12-year-old boy with a lingerie catalog. Plans for this year’s garden become an obsession that quickly grows out of all reasonable proportions, […]

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Spoils from the Soil

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, […]

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Tofu: The Other Holiday Meat

While traveling West on my way to can salmon in Alaska, I stopped in Tacoma, Washington, to stay the night with my aunt and uncle. My cousin had just graduated high school and the graduation party spread was available for post-driving snacks. I excitedly munched the baby carrots and dipped the cut cauliflower and broccoli […]

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