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, […]
Food & Drink
Posted inFood & Drink
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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Hog Haven
As local officials responded to the threat of floods in southeastern Iowa with repeated appeals for help with sandbagging, I jumped at the chance—to bury my head in the sand, or a sandbag, whatever could be spared. The last time I volunteered during a disaster, the results were disastrous. I’d been part of a mission […]
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Three Days on One Chicken
The economy is in shambles. Prices of everything are going up. K-Mart has brought back layaway plans. KFC is advertising that you can’t make their seven-piece “meal deal” at home for as cheap as you can get it at their place. I beg to differ. As I recently told my children as they headed off […]
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Food: It's Not Just for Elites
It’s going to take me a long time to fully understand the effects and implications of the first Slow Food Nation, held in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend. The brain power on display was impressive enough: Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Winona LaDuke, Carlo Petrini, Raj Patel, Eric Schlosser, and other luminaries took […]
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Border Dispute
Since 1992, Panchero’s Mexican Grill in downtown Iowa City has been serving burritos and other south-of-the-border foods to customers ranging from homegrown Iowa City residents to drunken college kids. It’s the flagship location for a restaurant that has branched into 17 states across the country. A year ago, a new “hombre” rolled into town—one with […]
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Free Rice and Ennui
Can’t seem to focus on work today and wish you could feed the hungry and test your vocabulary at the same time? Then check out FreeRice.com, prove you know what an “eland” is, and get 20 grains of rice donated to the United Nations World Food Program for each correct answer. Oh, and, if vocabulary […]
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The Real Food Supercenter
This is the time of year that we flatlanders pine for during the snows of January, when it’s a full 100 degrees colder than it is right now, and all the humidity is frozen to our windshields. September in Iowa is what makes things grow so well here – the hot, sticky dog days that […]
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International Flavor
International food can be hit-or-miss in small Midwestern cities. But thanks to a diverse population and a propensity for eating out, Iowa Citians can eat their way through a culinary world tour within city limits on a reasonable budget. Here are two stops that should be on everyone’s list. Oasis Falafel 206 N. Linn St., […]
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Food Without the Wrapper
Too many people in this country, I have learned, have been sold a bill of goods. They’ve been tricked. Flim-flammed. Conned. Hussled. Bamboozled into believing that food comes wrapped in plastic from a freezer in the nearest Wal-Mart and that cooking is a chore, like laundry or washing windows, to be avoided if at all […]
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Fields of Sea
Iowa experienced the flood of the century 15 years ago. That, of course, was a different century. Last month Iowans saw floods unlike any in living memory. Fourteen hundred city blocks in Cedar Rapids were inundated with water up to 11 feet deep. Twenty University of Iowa buildings were flooded. Interstates 80 and 380 were […]
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Deliciously Fresh
Ask anyone from local and national media to the average customer in Orscheln’s, and you’ll hear how Iowa farmers have taken a hard hit this year. Because of heavy spring rains many never had a chance to plant their corn or soybeans. And the subsequent flooding has ruined many crops already in the ground. However, […]
