As we all know, Hostess is in bankruptcy. And a lot of people are really upset about the loss of certain iconic brands of crappy baked goods filled with fake whip cream. Not me. The gas station chocolate muffin is all I need. I call them gas station muffins because I most often encounter...
There’s usually a farmer at the market who’s amenable to working a late-season deal on kale. This is partly thanks to timing: When farmers markets are getting ready to end for the year is exactly when the summer’s planting of kale is at its peak, in quality and quantity. Kale gets sweeter with cool...
Based on the variety of ice cream scoops on the market–1,529 available from Amazon alone–one might conclude the world faces a crisis of improperly or inconveniently excavated ice cream. I think it’s more a symptom of our love affair with cooking gadgetry. Today’s kitchens are bigger than ever, and can easily accommodate toys like...
Hunting animals can mean a lot of things, from freezer filling to sport killing. As a meat hunter, I’m looking for a year’s worth of protein, with or without antlers. Hunting season is a beautiful, invigorating part of my annual routine that gets my ass up and outside early and often. While I don’t...
It amazes me when people claim not to know what to do with squash. Because, other than pour milk over it in your cereal bowl, what can’t you do with squash? Can you fry it in bacon grease? Check. Toss the resulting browned chunks in a salad? Check. Simmer it in soup? Stuff it...
Update: This story posted October 19 on Alternet. The details that have emerged since, alas, have only served to strengthen my argument. Current polls show support for 37 continues to plummet, as the state is pummeled anti-37 ads that are as misleading as they are annoying. The opposition to California’s Proposition 37 (which...
French onion soup is the last meal Julia Child ate before she died. While she once publically wished to go out after a gluttonous feast of caviar, oysters and foie gras, ending on a rootsy note as she did was fitting for the champion of French cuisine. French cuisine is largely based in peasant...
The last time I had to pay for garlic, Bill Clinton was president and gas was a dollar a gallon. A buddy and I went in on a 50-pound sack of Killarney Red garlic, mail-ordered from a farm by the same name in northern Idaho. It cost a few hundred bucks, but when you’re...
Since reading Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation, I’ve changed my orientation as a pickler. I used to be such a committed maker of vinegar pickles that I didn’t even realize it was possible to make them any other way. Now that I’m a fermentation pickler I’m at the bottom of a new learning...
The way headlines broke around a recent Stanford study comparing organic and conventionally grown foods, you’d think organic had been left for dead. The New York Times, for example, announced that “Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce.” Maybe the doubt was inferred from the meta-study’s lukewarm synopsis: The published...