June 2013

My Favorite DIY: Rhubarb Ketchup, Mustard, and Marinara

When I think of rhubarb season, the same scene always comes to mind: I’m nine or ten years old walking barefoot through the dewy grass with my mom out to her rhubarb patch early on a Saturday morning. She lifts back the giant leaves and cuts the perfect stems – not too green, not too pink, not too long, not too short. Each stalk is then stacked across my outstretched arms like tiny cordwood.

 

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Market Cooking with Beth Dooley and the Minnesota's Bounty Cookbook

I have enough trouble just remembering to write down a recipe after I create or adapt one for my tastes. Then, when I do, there is always the question of accuracy, as all too often I come back to it a month or year later and it just doesn't turn out. So, I find it more than just a little miraculous that barely a year has passed since I received and reviewed the Northern Heartland Kitchen cookbook by Dooley, and already, I am receiving emails asking me if I was interested in her newest piece of work, Minnesota's Bounty: The Farmer's Market Cookbook.

 

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Great Grains: Quinoa and the Problem of Popularity

This is the twelfth post in the series Great Grains, highlighting unusual whole grains and easy ways to incorporate them into your diet.

 

If quinoa had a résumé, I’m pretty sure that every one of us would have to hire it for whatever job it wanted. Ten seconds on Google pops up enough qualifications to make me wonder why I ever eat anything else:

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Stocking Your Kitchen for Asian Cooking at Minneapolis's United Noodles

Yours truly has a superficial acquaintance with Asian cooking. I’ve made Pad Thai and sesame salmon for friends, and they’re still speaking to me. But on my first visit to United Noodles, any remaining illusions about my supposed savvy with Far East cuisine rapidly went south. Too. Much. Information. Head about to explode.

 

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SGT Book Club Recap: Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'

When Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, hit bookshelves in 2006, it immediately ascended to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List. Usually, a designation of this sort would prompt me to read the book as soon as possible, but something was different this time. I can’t exactly put a finger on the reason, but for some reason I wasn’t overly anxious to read the book; I think part of me feared the influence of Pollan’s perspective on food ethics as I continued to ponder my own food strategy and eating principles.

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Farm Journal: When Farmers Stay Dry

This is the second post in a summer-long series from a young farmer working as a harvest crew leader at Gardens of Eagan. Also check out the intro post, Laying New Roots.

 

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Midwest Pantry: Power to the (Local) Producer

I've always had a dream about community and neighbors. I'm not sure when the dream started, but I would imagine what would happen if I could fix someone's bicycle and they would pay me with a box of veggies or by helping with my taxes or by watching my kids. In the world of capitalism and trade that we live in, I grew up to hope that perhaps there might be a place where we could all see what our local communities and neighbors were producing. The closest thing I could find would be a flea market, farmer's market, or, later on, a coop grocery store. But I knew that something was still missing. It was never quite a complete picture.

 

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Hunting for Dinner: Bowfishing for Carp (and a Recipe for Carp Ceviche)

This is the eighth post in a series about hunting for food -- truly meeting your meat.

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DIY Craft Cocktails: Mixing Cocktails with Herbs

I ran into a problem last summer: too many herbs were coming out of my garden, so many that I couldn't keep up with them. The easy way to deal with this overflow would've been to make large batches of pesto and tabbouleh, or other variations on crushed-herb sauces or greens-and-grains salads. I did my best, but I still had a surplus. By the end of the growing season, I had to cut back armfuls of sorrel, thai basil, lemon thyme, curry, and others. All these great flavors (for which I had so many plans last May), and I ended up pitching them into the compost bin. It was silly: what was the point of nurturing these plants out of the dirt if I was only going to transform them back into dirt in a few months?

 

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Wellness: Feeling the Seasons of Our Bodies

This post is part of an ongoing series on Wellness, which looks at the importance of health and healing in living a Simple, Good, and Tasty lifestyle.

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