This belief, and retail efforts to cater to it, are misguided. If processed correctly, frozen meat is just as good as fresh. And it has advantages, like the fact that it won’t spoil in a few days. And with grass-fed beef, depending on what time of year the animal is slaughtered, frozen could very well be more nutritious than fresh.

Scott Barger of Mannix Bros Ranch in Montana told me he prefers to slaughter his cattle mid-summer, when feed quality is at its highest. “This would offer our customers the most healthy product, from a nutritional standpoint, because of the high omega-3′s, the conjugated linoleic acids, and other benefits of grass beef that come from our animals eating a living product. When you remove those animals from eating live feed and put them on a stored feed ration, those nutritional levels in the meat go down.”

In terms of meat quality, once the diet switches to hay at the end of summer, it’s downhill till springtime. The marble, that prized feature of good beef, is the first to go. “Marbling takes time to accomplish, but can be lost quickly,” Barger said.

Feedlot beef producers don’t have these concerns. They can keep their animals fat all winter long with relative ease by feeding them grain. To them, selling meat fresh is the way to go, because it allows for year-round production at full-throttle, will no extra steps like freezing.

The grass-fed beef industry, on the other hand, suffers from the idea that frozen meat is inferior to fresh. In most supermarkets, fresh meat is prominently presented in shiny display cases while frozen meat, if there’s any for sale at all, lurks down the frozen-food aisle. The only way grass-fed beef producers can get any visibility for their product in a supermarket is to supply fresh beef for that display case. To do so, grass-fed beef producers would have to maintain a year-round supply of market-sized animals ready for slaughter.

This reality broke a once-promising relationship between Whole Foods and Wyoming’s Arapaho Ranch in 2010. Arapaho Ranch’s cattle graze on native grasses at the foot of the Wind River Mountains, and are tended by Native American cowboys on horseback. This pristine, romantic setting seems exactly the kind of thing that Whole Foods shoppers would be eager to buy into. But the arrangement folded in its first year, thanks to Whole Foods’ need-based on customer preference-on fresh beef through the winter.

As the winter of 2010-2011 wore on, the animals at Arapaho Ranch inevitably began to shrink. As they became lighter, the ranch received less money per animal. In addition to feed costs, there were labor, medical, and other costs associated with keeping market-size animals alive through winter, and these all bit into profits. At the same time, winter storms made it difficult for the ranch to ship its animals, first to slaughter and then to Whole Foods’ regional hub in Denver. The arrangement became untenable for Arapaho, and Whole Foods wouldn’t budge on the price-fresh grass-fed beef was available from California or Florida. So while ranchers of grass-fed beef in those states might be helped by the American fixation with fresh meat, ranchers who operate anywhere there is winter are hurt by the fixation with fresh meat.

Whole Foods’ meat coordinator for the Rocky Mountain region, David Ruedlinger, told me, “If we could get shoppers to buy beef at the peak of the season and freeze it themselves, or buy frozen product off-peak that was harvested at peak season, all these problems would be solved.”

Because frozen beef doesn’t get much love at grocery stores, ranchers in cold regions who want to slaughter at the optimal time have little choice but to market their beef frozen, through the mail. Transactions like this are good for the rancher in that there is no middleman. But the consumer has to pay the high price of express shipping. And there is a karmic cost to burning so much carbon for the convenience of next-day frozen steak. If there were demand for frozen beef from grocery stores, they could make bulk shipments of frozen meat to retail outlets. They would be giving up a cut to a middleman, but it could be a lot less work then mailing away your animals piece by piece.

Thanks to last year’s drought, and competition for feed from the biofuels industry, American beef cow numbers are at their lowest since the 1950s. Perhaps this is an opportunity for grass-fed industry to grab some beef market share. Having a freezer-friendly audience would certainly help.

If frozen meat were the supermarket norm, the grass-fed beef industry would have a lot more room to operate. But this could only happen if consumers were willing to make lifestyle adjustments. Switching to frozen meat would mean more than just a walk down a new supermarket aisle. It would require meal-planning that factors in defrost time .

Adjusting to frozen meat would also mean getting savvy about distinguishing well-frozen meat from poorly frozen. Avoid frozen meat that’s wrapped in paper such that you can’t see what’s inside, because you have to see what it looks like in order to make an informed assessment. Properly frozen meat should be wrapped in tight plastic that hugs the meat, leaving no airspace where ice crystals can form. Stay away from any meat that’s discolored or has ice or air inside. Make note of the packing date, and make sure and use the meat before it’s a year old.

Let frozen beef thaw slowly, ideally overnight, as thawing too quickly can destroy a good piece of meat. No microwave or hot water, ever. The fastest I will thaw frozen meat, if I’m in a total hurry, is in a pot of cold water, in its packaging.

If that’s not fast enough, Wendy’s has a burger to sell you.

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Onions can be tricky to grow, which is why a farmer’s onions have long been considered a litmus test for agricultural skill. Hence the expression, “he knows his onions,” which is like saying, “he knows the ropes.” Knowing one’s onions in a literal sense is a great thing to aspire to, and this applies as much in the kitchen as it does in the garden.

Onions are absolutely fundamental to cooking. I may love garlic more, but I need onions. When I’m in the kitchen, I know my onions like Adam knew Eve. I don’t just use them, I make love to them.

This time of year presents unique opportunities for onion knowers, in both the kitchen and the garden, because last year’s crop is starting to sprout. In your pantry, on the counter, in mesh bags at the local grocery store before you even bring them home, the onion’s yearly urge to grow will no longer be denied.

At the very least, what you need to know about sprouting onion season is that you should give your prospective bulbs another squeeze before putting them in the cart, because onions usually soften as they sprout. If you find yourself with some sprouting onions on your hands—and you probably will—it’s worth letting them do their thing on the counter.

The sprouts are edible, and taste like scallions. Both sprouted onions and scallions, which are grown from seed, are forms of green onion, and for culinary purposes are virtually identical. Unlike the flesh of the onion bulb, which rarely steals the show in a meal, green onions often stand out, adding bitter pungency where bulbs add sweetness. Green onions are at their best when served raw, when they taste sharp and spicy, and have a bright green radiance. Just a few thin slices of green onion on your miso soup, for example, will crank up the contrast and make it significantly more interesting and beautiful.

Those with garden space can and should plant their sprouted onions and watch them grow into rejuvenated, non-rotting versions of themselves. Depending on the onion and when you plant it, you might get a full-sized bulb again, or a small bulb with a big, stunningly beautiful flower attached.

Those without dirt can place their sprouting onions on the windowsill. There you can enjoy their beauty, and do a little pruning any time you need some green onion pizzazz in your food. If you’re really into it, plant the sprouting onions indoors in pots.

If your sprouting onions don’t find you, there are many ways to hunt them down. The adventurous and thrifty might consider dumpster diving behind the grocery store. You could also point out the sprouted onions among the bulk bins inside the store in hopes the produce manager will let you have them—especially if the bulbs that host the sprouts are soft.

If you happen to find a sprouting onion bulb that’s still firm, it’s possible to carefully cut the bulb from around the sprout, leaving the roots at the bottom of the bulb attached to the sprouted part. The firm flesh of the bulb can be eaten, while the sprout can be planted.

While there is adventure to be had in the pursuit of onion greens, casting off in search of half-rotten root crops is not everybody’s idea of a good time. An important part of knowing one’s onions is knowing one’s limitations. Even if the greens of sprouted onions aren’t in your cards, their scallion cousins are coming into season at the farmers market and the store.

Knowing your onions can mean a lot of things, like how to cut them without crying, how to caramelize them without burning, and what raw onions—bulb or green—do in conjunction with browned meat (hint: It’s awesome.). This path of discovery is long but rewarding. To know your onions is more than how you grow, cook and eat them, it’s remembering how much you need them—and being grateful.

Here’s a recipe that will help you know and appreciate the green onions of springtime in a powerful way.

Steamed fish with ginger, scallion and soy sauce

Ingredients

One whole fish, 1-2 lbs., cleaned and scaled (preferably white-fleshed, like red snapper, branzino, or Pacific cod.)

A handful of shitake mushrooms, sliced

1 tbsp. (or so) of brown sugar

1 cup (or so) of soy sauce

A handful of green onions, chopped. Keep the lower, solid parts of the onion green separate from the upper, hollow parts.

A cubic inch of ginger, julienned

A few drops of toasted sesame oil

Directions

Make slits, crosswise, on each side of the fish, 1.5 inches apart. Stuff pieces of ginger into each slit. Steam the fish for 10 minutes. If you don’t have a steamer, put the fish on a plate on top of a bowl, or some other prop, inside a pot with water beneath a tight-fitting lid, so the fish steams on the plate.

While the fish is steaming, sauté the mushrooms in oil over medium heat. If you want to add a little butter, I won’t tell. When the mushrooms are done, add the solid chopped scallions and let them sauté with the mushrooms for two minutes. Add the soy sauce, the sugar, the rest of the ginger, and kill the heat. Stir the sauce to dissolve the sugar.

Move the steamed fish onto a serving plate. Pour the sauce over it. Garnish with the chopped hollow onion greens.

Police in Draper, Utah, had responded to Dale T. Smith and Sons Meat Packing Company, where Meyer was using a cell phone to video the goings on. No arrest was made, and police noted that Meyer was recording the view from a public street. Meyer’s attorney told the Salt Lake Tribune she was “surprised” a few days later when she learned charges were pressed. In April the prosecution began. At a plea hearing, she rejected a deal. A week later charges were dropped.

The failed prosecution of Amy Meyer, like the shelving of ag-gag bills in California and Indiana, is indicative of the uphill battle the meat industry faces. Footage of sick or injured cows being dragged to slaughter, animal cruelty, and other unsafe and illegal activities are just the tip of a meat industry PR problem that’s rooted in the inescapable fact that killing animals for food, under any circumstance, is disturbing to many people.

Most people who eat meat do so in spite of the uncomfortable realities, and probably, at some level, regret that an animal had to die. But evidently the hunger for meat overpowers any remorse the meat eaters might feel.

Some kinds of meat, like wild game and ethically farmed livestock, offers meat eaters a chance to rationalize that at least the animals lived happy lives. But with industrially produced meat, we know it’s ugly. And thanks to videos like those that ag-gag laws seek to ban, we know in great detail how just how very ugly it can be.

The scary part for the meat industry is that even videos in which no laws are broken are stirring anti-meat sentiment. For many people, even business as usual in the slaughterhouse is unpalatable.

The cat is out of the bag; we can’t forget what we have seen. Nor are we inclined, based on the industry’s track record, to believe it can or will self-police its way to salvation. It’s been more than 100 years since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a novel set in Chicago’s meatpacking district.

The Jungle focused on the working and living conditions endured by meatpackers and their families, and Sinclair was surprised when the public reaction was revulsion at the meat. Years later he famously said “I aimed at the public’s heart and I hit it in the stomach.”

While Sinclair’s aspirations for effecting social change went unfulfilled, the book led to two important pieces of food safety legislation: the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the latter establishing what became the Food and Drug Administration.

Thanks to these laws, there have been many advances in all aspects of the meat industry, but it’s nonetheless noteworthy how many ways in which little has changed. To this day, worker safety and slaughterhouse conditions remain contentious issues. Meat safety is still very much an issue. And animal-rights activists have introduced another dimension to the slaughterhouse debate: that the feelings of animals need be considered.

This isn’t to say that animal rights activists invented the concept of respect for animals. Even Sinclair, while it wasn’t his priority, took some time to commiserate with doomed pigs.

“And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests-and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage of a tear.”

The ceremony that Sinclair missed is no frivolous thing. Some acknowledgement of the lives and deaths of the animals we eat does seem appropriate. I’m not suggesting that slaughterhouses conduct a sweat lodge ceremony every time an animal dies. But the industry as a whole, somehow, should acknowledge the need, felt by many, to atone for the tragedy at the foundation of eating meat. The industry also needs to acknowledge that meat processing is a topic people don’t want hidden anymore. For reasons ethical, environmental, and health-related, a growing segment of the population wants to pull back the shrink wrap and see what’s behind the meat inside.

Perhaps the smart thing for the meat industry to do is precisely the opposite of pushing ag-gag legislation, and let people see inside. If the public were allowed to tour slaughterhouses, it would demonstrate that industry hears the concerns and wants to show it has nothing to hide. Letting people see would be an important step in winning back their trust.

It wouldn’t be an easy adjustment, given that much of what the public is offended by is perfectly legal. In this way, industry does have something to hide. And this is where the tragedy of meat is working against the meat industry. This is why this activity has always been done behind closed doors. But although the slaughterhouses can’t change the fact that animals are killed, they can change the environment in which they are dispatched.

Whatever changes that might result from increasing transparency will probably not be easy. And they might not be cheap. But unlike how ag-gags are shaping up to be, pulling back the shrink wrap might be on the right side of history. Shining a light in this historically dark place could improve the well-being of the slaughterhouse workers as well as the animals. And if the changes that result improve the quality of meat, then meat eaters will have some animal rights activists to thank.

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Nitrogen fixation in a lab was first demonstrated in 1909. Under intense heat and pressure, atmospheric nitrogen was converted to ammonium nitrate, which was known to be good for plants, as well as explosive. The Haber-Bosch process, as it became known, was developed with agriculture in mind. But when the U.S. entered World War II, it was put to work producing ammonium nitrate for blowing stuff up. When the wars ended, factories that had been built to manufacture bombs switched to fertilizer. The sudden abundance of cheap nitrate fertilizer opened the door to modern factory farming.

Organic sources of nitrogen include the growing and rotation of cover crops, the spraying of fish emulsion and other biologically based liquids, and covering the ground with compost, manure or some other mulch. The process of getting these materials into place is usually labor-intensive, but worth it for reasons beyond the nitrogen, as it can improve soil structure, increase microbial diversity, and help the soil retain moisture. The Nature paper notes that organic crops tend to have an advantage during in drought situations.

Sometimes-quite often, according to the Nature data-organic practices don’t supply as much nitrogen as crops can consume. If a farmer isn’t in the position to truck in some solution, like composted lama manure, nitrate fertilizer might be the best option.

Unfortunately, while using nitrates in moderation isn’t a mortal sin, today’s typical use is hardly moderate. With the stuff so cheap and abundant, farmers often spread considerably more than they need, and not as efficiently as they should. Every molecule of ammonium nitrate that isn’t absorbed by the crop plant is a pollutant. Fertilizer runoff in rivers can lead to unrestrained growth of algae and weeds that can choke a river to death. Further downstream, in the ocean, nitrogen fertilizers can cause ecological dead zones.

As long as energy is cheap, nitrate fertilizer will be widely available. In its relatively brief period of existence thus far, fertilizer has fueled the growth of industrial agricultural commodities like corn and grains. I don’t consider all of these advances to be desirable, but it’s possible to be against corn syrup, ethanol, grain-fattened cattle, and other products of modern agriculture, yet still accept an appropriate use of nitrate on farms that are doing their best but are still nitrogen deficient.

Agriculture is a complicated, contentious topic, and too often the debates are framed in binary terms like “organic” and “conventional,” as if food were a two-party political system. Many studies have been done to see which one is better, with the results being applied to arguments on both sides of the divide. The Nature study was a meta-analysis of 66 studies comparing organic and conventional agriculture, and compared the respective yields of 344 crops. In this sample, conventional techniques outperformed organic methods in terms of overall yield, but differences varied greatly from crop to crop. It found organic crops to be generally nitrogen deficient, and conventional crop systems generally oversaturated with nitrates.

The paper suggests hybrid farming could be useful in some contexts. Hybrid farming borrows heavily from organic practices but also is open to certain non-organic practices, such as targeted nitrate application.

One of the paper’s authors, Dr. Navin Ramankutty of McGill University, told me by phone he’s intrigued at the possibilities of hybrid farming, and thinks it could offer as-yet unquantified promise in subsistence situations, as well as more demonstrated potential for improving yield in commercial organic applications.

The FDA’s comment period on AquAdvantage salmon recently closed. Kapuscinski and her colleague, Fredrik Sundström, recently submitted an 18-page comment, which you can read here.

Montana governor Steve Bullock recently signed a bill legalizing the salvage, consumption, and/or donation to charity of animals hit and killed by cars-aka roadkill. The law applies to deer, elk, antelope and moose, and puts the state in the company of Alaska, Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, Florida, and West Virginia in condoning the consumption of vehicle-tenderized meat. With deer populations at all-time highs in many regions-and car vs. deer collisions skyrocketing as well-it’s possible other states will follow suit with roadkill bills of their own.

Salvaging roadkill makes sense for several reasons. Wild game is some of the healthiest meat there is, and it’s a shame to let it rot by the road. Eating roadkill could save families a lot of money they would otherwise have spent on meat, which might have something to do with why the beef industry lobbied against the bill, citing food-safety concerns.

In addition to feeding people, roadkill salvage would protect the lives of eagles, ravens, coyotes and other scavengers that typically feast on roadside carcass, and are sometimes killed themselves in the process. And the bill stands to save taxpayer dollars, as every carcass removed by a meat salvager is one fewer that road crews have to deal with-which typically entails hauling it to the dump for composting.

While the beef industry’s food-safety concerns may be motivated by the bottom line, there are, in fact, health issues to consider regarding roadkill consumption. Additionally, there are ethical issues to contend with, such as the possibility that some idiot might intentionally hit an animal as an easy way to harvest meat or collect antlers.

The way the law is written, a law-enforcement official must issue a permit to would-be roadkill eaters before a carcass can be legally removed from the scene. And the law specifies that the collision must be accidental. But it’s not out of the question-or unprecedented-that motorists might decide not to hit the brakes, especially if the animal has an impressive set of antlers. It’s amazing how irrational some people can act when a nice rack is involved. But such behavior, while punishable by law, is also self-limiting by the survival instinct. Anyone who’s crashed into a deer knows how fun that can be.

As far as the meat itself is concerned, the deer you hit yourself is more likely to be salvageable, while eating a carcass you happen upon raises many unanswerable questions. The most important of these are when and how did the animal die?

The less you know about the answers the weaker your ability to evaluate whether the meat is worth dealing with. This is especially true in warmer seasons and warmer regions, which is why I was surprised to learn that Florida and West Virginia allow the harvest of roadkill; heat is one of the main enemies of meat quality.

As a hunter, not only do I want my meat to be safe, I want it to be perfect. Putting perfect meat in the freezer is a bit like pitching a perfect game in baseball. Where in baseball if just one opposing player gets on base the magic is lost, while with meat there is a long sequence of steps that must be completed correctly to ensure top quality. Whether the meat is acquired via hunting or car crash, the forces that create bad flavor and spoilage are virtually identical.

Despite my earlier joke about vehicle-tenderized meat, the part of the animal that took the brunt of the collision is likely to be ruined-resembling a wound more than something you want to eat. Spoilage and bad flavor can emanate throughout the body from the point of contact, especially in the heat. But heat spoilage can happen even in mild weather, because a dead animal takes a long time to cool down. A hunter wants to open the body cavity as soon as possible to let the body heat escape, and the same would be true for roadkill.

Until you open it up, you have no idea what it looks like inside. It could be a total mess, with exploded guts and traumatized meat. Maybe the motorist that hit the deer managed to just run over the deer’s head, but it’s likely there will be some damaged meat. If the funk has not spread, you can probably cut away the bruised part. And if you’re too late, a trained nose will alert you of that when you open it up.

Montana Sen. Kendall Van Dyk, D-Billings, used a similar gauge to express his skepticism of the roadkill bill. “Despite its good intention, it doesn’t pass the smell test for me,” he told the AP, citing food safety concerns.

It’s find it funny that the supposedly freedom-loving Republicans want to deny us a right that’s freely enjoyed by ravens, coyotes and other scavengers-especially when preventing waste could be considered a conservative approach. But in this case it seems like the Dems who are in favor of freedom-the freedom to be conservative, no less. “It really is a sin to waste a good meat,” state Sen. Larry Jent, D-Bozeman told the AP.

If safety concerns are truly motivating the opposition to the roadkill bill, it’s the meat itself that needs to pass the sniff test. And rather than make people drive by good meat so they can purchase their packaged pink slime at the store, it makes sense to educate the public on how to gauge meat quality as best they can, and allow the judicious eating of roadkill. It’s not a new idea, but is an idea whose time has come.

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One of the main reasons to source your food as close to home as possible is it cuts down on carbon costs associated with shipping. Eating local is a good rule of thumb, but with rules come exceptions. I call mine the Slow Boat Exception. It states that if a food could be transported on an unrefrigerated sailboat, it can be included in a locally oriented meal without a side of guilt.

“Slow Boat” is a nod to the wind-powered, unrefrigerated cargo boats upon which global trade once depended. On those vessels, the only things that could be shipped were nonperishables like spice and canned or dry goods. Marco Polo used a slow boat to introduce noodles to Italy from China. Slow boats likewise spread peppers, tomatoes and potatoes from the new world to the old. In other words, global transport played a crucial role in the evolution of many cuisines around the world. And to this day, shipping food long-distance can be a very good thing with little downside.

If unrefrigerated sailboats were still the norm, many of the carbon-related problems associated with long-distance transport of food would be eliminated. In 2008, French shipper Compagnie de Transport Maritime delivered 30,000 bottles of wine to Dublin on the century-old tall ship Kathleen & May. And while that turned out to be an isolated case, the same principle applies to the gargantuan, slow moving cargo ships currently plying the seas. Sure, these vessels burn fuel, but they carry such massive payloads that the carbon burned per unit of food is negligible compared to other forms of transport, especially if the cargo isn’t refrigerated.

A ship dubbed “Triple E” launched recently from a South Korean dock, is currently the largest cargo ship in history, capable of carrying 18,000 shipping containers—2,500 more than the previous record holder. The company that commissioned the Triple-E, Danish shipper Maersk, just ordered 20 more.

The Triple-E, or any other boat, won’t be making deliveries to Nebraska anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean inland dwellers can’t employ the Slow Boat Exception in their purchasing decisions. The inland equivalent of a slow boat is a train, which is roughly 10 times more fuel efficient than trucks and 100 times more efficient than planes. Consumers usually don’t have any idea whether their food arrives by train, Triple-E or magic carpet. Still, if you limit your imports to foods that could have been transported efficiently, that edges you closer to the solution side of the carbon-burning spectrum, and away from the problem of consuming things that must be transported quickly and cold.

At its core, the Slow Boat Exception isn’t about boats, or even transport. It’s about getting into the habit of considering food choices case by case, guided by principles but grounded in nuance. The carbon costs of transport represent only a small fraction of the carbon costs associated with food, while food production and processing burn the lion’s share—the exact carbon cost varies from food to food. The production of olive oil, for example, involves significantly less fossil fuel than the production of highly processed seed oils like canola or soy.

Just as production practices and distances traveled burn varying amounts of carbon, so does the timing of when a product is consumed. While most of the country can’t eat citrus locally, we can all eat it seasonally. And since citrus is in season during winter, refrigeration isn’t needed for its transport. Southern-hemisphere citrus, shipped farther and during our summer, has a higher cost of transport, refrigeration and, in some cases, storage.

Without being overly obsessive, I lean locally in my food choices. But I have no qualms about supplementing my local foods with exotic ingredients like coconut milk, curry paste, black pepper, Brazil nuts, coffee, tea, chocolate and many more of the culinary treasures the world has to offer.

Blanket rules can be useful guidelines when making food purchases, but don’t set that ship on autopilot. Putting actual thought into your choices is a much more sustainable way of putting food on the table. And that’s a rule that has no exception.

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Early spring can be a challenging time to eat locally, because last summer’s stash is wearing thin and this year’s harvest is months away. But here’s a Slow Boat recipe that works any time of year-especially if you did your homework last summer.

Curried eggs with broccoli

3 eggs (preferably local, from chickens that get daily foot massages…you get the picture)

1 tablespoon Patak’s curry paste, from a jar (from India, one of the original Slow Boat destinations)

One small/medium head of broccoli, like frozen broccoli from last summer’s farmers market

Olive oil (European on the east coast, Californian in the interior and west, Slow Boat either way)

salt (the original Slow Boat ingredient)

garlic (don’t get me started)

optional: bacon

Prepare a pan with olive oil and/or bacon on medium heat. Fry broccoli florets in the oil/grease. Pour a little water in the pan and cover it, so the broccoli steam-fries. While that’s happening, beat the eggs in a bowl with a fork. Use your fingers to drop pebble-sized chunks of curry paste into the egg mix.

When the broccoli is done to your liking, stir in the chopped garlic. Make sure the broccoli is evenly dispersed in the pan, then add the curry-and-egg mixture. Let it cook for about 30 seconds, give it a good stir or two with a spatula, then kill the heat. If the eggs are still too runny for your liking, put the lid back on. The residual heat should finish the job.

It would be a stretch to accuse me of being overly tidy, and the same can be said for my garden. But lazy and greedy? Guilty as charged. And when I allow these tendencies to play out in the garden, the target result is high output with minimal input, to indulge both my great expectations and my, shall we say, hands-off approach. My garden isn’t the most organized patch of dirt on the block, but it’s the only garden I can grow. And it does what I ask.

At the core of my low-effort, high-return gardening style is a practice I call throwing seeds at the garden. This technique is exactly what it sounds like: After preparing the soil and deciding what I’m going to plant in a given plot, I blanket the area with seeds cast by the handful. These seeds are not for my intended crops, but for a blanket of leafy plants to cover the space between them.

The seeds, usually a mixture of leafy greens and carrots, grow into an edible, living mulch. I look at it as a bonus crop, as it grows in space that isn’t normally planted. And it fills an important function in the garden as a ground cover.

I often toss seeds at the garden multiple times in a season. This year’s first tossing, just the other week, was a mix of curly and flat-leafed endive, tall and round radicchio, escarole, lettuce, cilantro, spinach, chard, basil, and whatever else I could scrounge together in the old seed bag. I even threw in sunflowers, nasturtiums, and beets. I simply dumped all my old seeds from last year’s garden in a bag, walked outside, and tossed my seeds at the empty brown garden by the handful, like I was seeding grass.

The garden had been put to bed last winter with early season seed tossing in mind, so it was ready. I raked the ground before and after seeding, and then watered in the seeds really well. Already the ground is dusted with green confetti.

My garden is basically one big garlic patch, which works well for my practice. Garlic is a great crop to scatter seeds at for several reasons. Garlic plants grow vertically, both above and below ground, so there is no conflict with other leaves or roots. Garlic doesn’t need much tending in general, so you won’t be stepping much on your greens and carrots. Also, garlic likes mulch, and if I wasn’t using this edible living mulch I’d have to mulch it with something else, like straw. After the garlic is harvested in July, it’s off to the races for the scattered carrots and greens, which suddenly have the place to themselves.

Other crops that work well intercropped with edible mulch are similarly lanky, non-spreading plants like corn, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, to name a few. Tomatoes, strawberries, and other slow-spreading plants can work as well. After all, tomatoes don’t really fill in until July. You can grow a lot of greenery in the space between in the meantime. You can also train tomatoes vertically to allow more salad space between plants.

Even if you don’t know what main crop you want to plant yet, you can start your garden as soon as the ground has thawed enough to be worked, by throwing seed mix at your blank garden now, and planting into it when the occasion arises. Say you’re at the farmers market and see some beautiful eggplant or pepper transplants to buy. You just take them home, clear a space in the salad and carrot patch, and pop them in. While the transplants are still small you may have to “weed” the neighboring mulch plants to make sure the new starts don’t get smothered by salad. By the same token, now would be a great time to place a seed order for some leaves and carrots.

It’s well-known that eating green leafy vegetables offers multiple health benefits. In addition to the dietary advantages of edible green mulch, it’s also a basic part of my zero-tolerance policy toward exposed earth, Any piece of ground that I can glimpse between plants is a place where sunlight is being wasted. Every wasted photon is a missed opportunity for edible plant growth, and actually does damage when it strikes the earth. Sun and wind both allow moisture to escape the ground, and wind can blow topsoil away.

My edible mulch discourages such damage by forming a thick green mat that captures the sunlight and shields the ground from the elements. It also tempers the daily extremes of hot and cold, and fosters an active bacterial presence in the soil, which can make a big difference in the garden’s yield.

And, anytime you want to have a salad or a stir fry, tear into that green mulch. It will eagerly grow back, which means that unless you’re a total salad addict you can harvest as much as you like. When the garden has finally run its course come fall, make sure to dig up the carrots before the tops die in the frost. After that, the carrots will still remain happy and delicious in the ground-if you can find them. Without the tops to flag them, you won’t know where to dig.

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Omega-6 fatty acids are the most common PUFA in many vegetable oils, especially safflower, corn, sunflower and soy oils. Generally considered healthier than animal fats, the new study is the latest in the growing body of evidence that salad dressing could be worse than bacon.

The Sydney Diet Heart Study (SDHS) ran from 1966 to 1973, and involved 458 menwho had recently experienced a “coronary event.” They were divided into two groups. Members of the control group were told to keep eating whatever they wanted, while the other group was instructed to replace the majority of its saturated fat intake with safflower oil, the highest dietary source of linoleic acid-which is itself the highest dietary source of omega-6 fatty acids.

Given conventional wisdom on the relative health benefits of saturated fats vs PUFAs, one would expect the safflower group in the SDHS to fare better than the group that ate more saturated fat. Instead, the safflower group experienced a higher rate of death from coronary heart disease (16.3 percent to 10.1 percent) and cardiovascular disease (17.2 percent to 11 percent. The linoleic acid group also had the highest incidence of total mortality from all causes at 17.6 percent, versus 11.8 percent for the control group.

This is hardly the first challenge to the idea that all we need to remember is that PUFAs are better than saturated fats. A British Journal of Medicine editorial that was published concurrent with the new study points out that this is not the only research calling the health benefits of linoleic acid into question.

“The new analysis of these old data provides important information about the impact of high intakes of omega 6 PUFAs, in particular linoleic acid, on cardiovascular mortality at a time when there is considerable debate on this question. The findings underscore the need to properly align dietary advice and recommendations with the scientific evidence base.”

But the status quo isn’t going anywhere without a fight. Three years ago the American Heart Association doubled down on the idea that we need to increase our daily intake of omega-6 PUFAs, aka linoleic acid. According to the AHA, increased daily linoleic acid intake “… appears to be safe and may be even more beneficial.”

This paradigm assumes that omega-6s are essential for heart disease prevention because they lower blood cholesterol, including “bad” or LDL cholesterol. Since LDL is a marker of and contributor to heart disease and atherosclerosis, it’s been assumed that we should increase our intake of omega-6s to help lower those levels. But as the authors of the new study point out, “Clinical benefits of omega 6 linoleic acid have not been established.”

Also worth remembering here is that, contrary to popular assumption, most blood cholesterol-LDL and HDL-is made by the body, with very little coming from dietary sources. So while diet certainly plays a role, it’s only part of the picture of blood cholesterol regulation.

But even as we call into question excessive levels of omega-6 intake, it’s important to remember that some amount is essential for normal growth, development and health. And the effects of the second-most-common PUFA, omega-3 fatty acids have been documented much more convincingly. Having a balance of omega-6s and omega-3s in your diet has been shown to be healthier, which can’t be said for omega-6s alone.

The connection between dietary fat and heart disease is a lot more complicated than we’ve been led to believe. While the re-analyzed data from the SDHS offers some interesting insights into how the body handles different dietary fats, the study was not perfect by today’s standards. A modern version, based on newly gathered data, would do a lot to help address these questions.

Knowing what we might know about linoleic acid demands the question: if it does kill people faster then animal fat, when does it become unethical to keep feeding it to folks just to see what happens?

Dietary recommendations on linoleic acid are a lot more cautious in some other countries, like Britain. Are they being too uptight about omega-6 PUFAs, or are the likes of the AHA dangerously exuberant? Even in the clearest of cases, the lag time between when a new idea becomes established scientifically and when it becomes medical consensus can be years or decades. For omega-6 fatty acids the writing is on the wall.

Among vegetable oils, coconut oil contains the fewest omega-6s. Olive oil is also low. Canola, is low as well. Animal fats contain PUFAs, but not as many as the seed oils like safflower, sunflower, corn and soy oils, and in different form than linoleic acid. Animal PUFAs also contain a balance of omega-6 and omega-3. That said, not all animal fats are created equal. It’s buyer beware to come up with a grease that’s tasty, fair, clean, and affordable.

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