July 2010

July’s Simple Good and Tasty Book Club Pick: Real Food

July’s book club selection continues our education in and understanding of our favorite thing here at Simple, Good and Tasty: FOOD! As we all know, there are many real and complex issues surrounding the way we get food to our mouths these days. And there are trade-offs that need to be made. But what’s better? And how do you decide? 

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Living with Livestock, Part Four: Cattle Conundrums

My last in a series of four livestock workshops at the University of Minnesota took place on the Rosemount campus, a 7,000-acre spread given to the university by the U.S. Department of Defense. Originally used for manufacturing smokeless gunpowder during World War II, the site now hosts experiments in both produce and livestock run by the U of M’s farm extension program. Its broad expanses of wild grasslands made the perfect setting to discuss those pasture-loving fixtures of livestock farms, cows.

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Give Up the Cell Phone

A few weeks ago, I declared June 26 "Signal Free Saturday," an opportunity to put down our cell phones, laptops, PDAs, and iPads and look our loved ones directly in the eye for the first time in weeks, months, or years. I was excited for the excuse to give my wife my full attention, rather than the usual 50 percent. I was excited to play with my kids without wondering if something more interesting was in my email. Work be damned, I was going to be free!

Only it turns out that giving up the phone is more complicated than that - or at least that's how it felt to me. Here's how it went:

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Perennial Plate Video: From Farm to Market with Loon Organics

Earlier this week, Alicia Jabbar wrote an illuminating post about farmer's markets from the farmer's point of view. You get up at the crack of dawn, work in the dirt -- in the blistering sun and the pelting rain -- picking and cleaning vegetables, all to just pack it all up the next morning. Then you drive, unpack, sell, talk endlessly, offer samples, re-pack and drive again. This is the process that brings snap peas for $4 a quart to a farmer's market near you. This is fresh food grown by real people. I don't know about you, but I usually take it for granted.

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The Great Scape

You know that feeling, when you’ve been with someone a long time and you feel like you know every thing about them. You know every story, every place they lived, every band they loved, but then out of the blue, maybe at a party, maybe while you’re weeding the garden or drinking coffee, you hear a story you’ve never heard before. And in that split second, your eyes open wide and you feel ever so slight a sensation of frisson at the novelty, the mystery, the possibility.

Well, I’ve been with vegetables a long time – ever since I can remember, really. At this point, I thought I had tried every one, every which way. I thought I knew all of their seasons, all of their stories. But I was wrong. Oh, was I ever wrong. Last week at the Kingfield Farmers Market, I came upon a basket of bright green tangles that stopped me in my tracks.

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Marler vs. Gumpert: A Raw Debate About Milk

Raw milk. In the past month, no two words have caused more controversy on Simple, Good and Tasty than these. In the wake of an E.coli outbreak that's been linked to raw milk from a small, Minnesota dairy farm, we have seen our readers line up in two distinct camps: those who can’t understand why anyone would risk drinking raw milk, and those who can’t understand why anyone would drink anything else.

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