In honor of Farmers Market Week next week, I vowed here to get out of my market rut and cook outside my comfort zone . That’s how I came to be picking up these beautiful squash blossoms on impulse at the Berkeley, Calif. Farmers market on Saturday. Squash blossoms, or fiori di zucca as they are called in Italy, are my madeleines. I first ate them when I was an 8-year-old military kid — OK, yes, a brat — living in the steep... 

To mark the opening of “Water, Rivers and People (Agua, Ríos y Pueblos),” a photography exhibition about people’s relationship with rivers and their struggle to protect them from destructive dams, mining projects, and other threats, International Rivers held a panel discussion with two of the exhibit’s photographers and two river activists. One of the main themes of the discussion was the importance of images in galvanizing... 

As an apartment-dweller, I know the frustration of not having enough soil to call my own for a garden. (Why do you think I garden in other people’s yards?) For many years, I’ve had a small assembly of various-sized pots to keep some of my favorite herbs close at hand, and I’ve even tried growing the occasional vegetable in such containers as well. More urban dwellers — especially those in apartments or condos, living... 

In Episode 2 of this season’s ” Top Chef ,” the contestants took on school lunch: the 16 contestants divided into four teams, each of which had to cook a nutritionally acceptable lunch for 50 students with a budget of only $2.60 per meal and 30 minutes to plan, 30 minutes to shop, 2.5 hours to prep, and 1 hour to heat before service. Although the episode had the kind of drama you expect from the best of reality television —... 

Before Local Roots Market opened late last year, we expected gaps in the products offered. One specific category of products –- cheese –- kept us from limiting our definition of “local” to “within 100 miles” as we weren’t sure how many cheesemakers we would find in the area. Boy, were we wrong. Turns out that the most recent addition to a stellar collection of Ohio artisan cheesemakers is well within …  Read More →

Off to war against the weed-lurking worms. (Steph Larsen photos) I’m at war with the common stalk borer. As much as I believe in sustainability and chemical-free agriculture in theory, I’ve never been more tempted to use insecticides as I am right now. For years, the signature for my email has been a quote from the agtivist-scientist Vandana Shiva , “Sustainability begins with peace with the Earth.” Contrary to current... 

Ever since taking a cartography class in graduate school, I’ve had a penchant for maps. Full of information, they elegantly highlight places and ideas that we may have missed otherwise. As a visual person, I can appreciate the splashes of color and clean designs. But not all maps are visual. We can create sound maps by closing our eyes, listening to the sounds we hear, and mapping them in relation to ourselves. Doing so can …  Read More →

With a terrible economy and lots of coverage of gardening in the mass media, more and more Americans are growing food in home and community gardens. According to a 2009 survey, almost a third of American households intended to grow food that year, a 19% increase over 2008. These numbers and many more can be found in the National Gardening Association’s “Impact of Home and Community Gardening in America” ( PDF ), one of the documents... 

As you may have guessed by now, I love to bake. And since part of my self-employment now entails baking goods to sell at Local Roots , I’m keenly interested both in sourcing what grains and flours I can find locally — as well as growing what I can. Thanks to the inspiration offered by Gene Logsdon in his ” Small-Scale Grain Raising ” ( reviewed last year ), I started growing buckwheat , a flavor most people know only through... 

(Steph Larsen photos) Everyone knows the Boy Scouts’ motto: Be Prepared. While my immediate inclination is to ask “For what?”, it’s as good a command as any to live by. One at which I failed miserably last week. I came home from work and went out to the sheep paddocks to make sure they looked healthy and had enough water and grass. When I got there, I was confronted by a complete surprise: a tiny newborn lamb, unsteady... 

The full spread (Steph Larsen photos) Editor’s note: In a new series called Green Acreage , Steph Larsen chronicles the sprouting of a small but sustainable Nebraska property. ——————————— Last December, I bought the farm. Clearly I mean this in the literal, not euphemistic, sense. (Although I’ve spent some time pondering why the phrase ” bought the farm ”... 

By Mat Rogers The 1979 children’s book Ox-Cart Man describes a colonial family who spends all year raising a crop and an ox, building the ox’s cart, and making mittens, brooms, and candles. Then the ox-cart man sets off to market to sell the crop and the mittens, brooms, and candles, then the ox, then the cart. He returns home carrying the supplies from the market the family will need for the next year and everyone starts over again. Maybe... 

The Goldman Environmental Prize was awarded to six grassroots environmental heroes from around the world in San Francisco last Monday night. Three of the six 2010 winners are working directly in food-related areas. Lynn Henning’s 300-acre corn and soybean farm in Lenawee County, Michigan, has twelve meat production operations within ten miles. Fed up with the air and water pollution from the CAFOs, she started collecting samples from waterways... 

I was eating breakfast at North Berkeley’s Guerrilla Cafe the other day when I spotted a sign on the other side of the room with this intriguing headline: “MONKEY FOR HIRE.” After ordering their waffle of the day (buckwheat!), I went over to take a closer look at the sign. It read, “Are you tired of looking up into your tall fruit trees, gazing at lemons…  Read More →

This is part 3 of a series on improving market-based seafood sustainability initiatives, inspired by a recent article published by an international team of researchers in “Oryx: The International Journal of Conservation.” (See Oryx volume 44, pp. 45-56 doi: 10.1017/S0030605309990470 . Summaries available from Science Daily , AFP .) Part 1, ” Why seafood wallet cards can be the wrong bait for consumers ,” looked at the...