Family & Home

For years, I would see a vegetable like okra or mustard greens in a grocery store and imagine what it would be like to make a delicious meal with such exotic ingredients. I was constantly promising myself that next week I would find recipes to fulfill my culinary fantasies. But as the weeks passed, it became obvious that I needed something else to get my creativity going. Fortunately, my fiancé knows me incredibly well, and he gave me a CSA subscription as a gift.

I recently had the chance to sit down with a handful of sixth graders at Sanford Middle School in Minneapolis. The students had been complaining that the lunches they were being served tasted bad and made them feel sick, and their teacher asked me to come answer questions, provide context, and make suggestions.

For an hour, these thoughtful students and I discussed healthy food choices, growing a garden, being pressed for time (a 12 year old girl told me she didn't have time to put an apple in her backpack in the morning), eating on a budget, and how to affect change. I've been thinking about the discussion ever since.

There were baby sea urchins and shark fins and banana leaves and duck eggs and shrimps with eyes! And these candies you whistle through and real pig heads! And black chickens! And live snails that you catch with a scooper! And we got Chinese restaurant spoons! My kids were all talking at the same time, clambering all over each other to get my husband’s attention, while I sat back feeling mighty proud of myself.

After years of living in a city, I find myself a bit confused about what to do with the backyard in my new rural home. How do I maximize the space to provide myself with local food in the truest sense of the word? First, I sketched a plan for a garden, which was easy after a seven-month gig working on an organic vegetable farm. But I’m not a vegan, so I find myself wanting more.

For years, I’ve tracked blog posts and articles battling out the pros and cons of backyard chickens. Plus, I learned how to take care of chickens myself during my time on the farm last year. So I decided that the missing piece in my plan for a backyard farm is chickens.

The cheese available in the United States has changed dramatically in the past decade. From coast to coast, the quantity and quality of locally made cheese has increased, and so has our interest in sampling new and different types. From Brebis (sheep’s milk cheese) to Chêvre (goat’s milk cheese), and from a triple cream to a Tomme, we are wide open to new tastes and textures; but we may not be up to speed when it comes to taking care of this fragile food.

To be able to fully enjoy the flavors of a cheese it needs be stored properly and served at the right temperature. Those delicate wheels, wedges, blocks and logs that have been carefully coaxed to ripened perfection and are teeming with beneficial microorganisms that deserve better treatment than in your fridge and on your counter.

Yogurt is one of the few real foods that hasn't been demonized in recent decades. Bread, butter, milk and meat have all come under scrutiny, but yogurt has retained its standing as a healthful food. While probiotics have become trendy, yogurt has always been a great source of the live bacteria – like acidophilus – that's beneficial to our digestive tracts. Plus, yogurt is a good source of protein and calcium. So what’s the problem?

Two things: One is that there hasn't been a good, local, organic yogurt widely available in the Twin Cities. And the other is the plastic containers, which Minneapolis and St. Paul recycling don't collect.

“You deeeep them!” explained my Argentine mother standing behind a cutting board overflowing with seemingly every vegetable known to man. She made a dipping motion with the cauliflower floret in her hand, while trying to keep her piles from avalanching into each other. “Like fondue?” I asked hopefully, visions of chocolate-covered strawberries dancing in my 10-year-old head. “Si, pero tiene mucho mucho ajo!” Lots and lots of garlic.

Are you thinking ahead to spring? I know it’s hard to fathom in the midst of our deep freeze, but spring really IS just around the corner. Sadly, spring is when my allergies rear their ugly mugs and turn the otherwise lovely experience of new life blooming into a major sneeze-fest. Whether you've got allergies or you’re just looking for a way to clear your home of allergens, toxins, and other not-so-pleasant environmental hazards, here are some ideas that may help. (Don’t forget to check out our previous articles on detoxing your kitchen and your bath and laundry.)

Back in November -- appropriately enough, on Thanksgiving Day -- four scientists for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, published a report about the environmental impact of food waste in America. They calculated that, every year, as much as 40 percent of America’s food supply is discarded! (That’s a 28 percent increase, by the way, since 1974.) If you divide that amount among every man, woman and child living in the U.S., we’re talking 1,400 kilocalories -- or 1.4 million calories -- per day, per person, that end up in the trash.

It's not terribly unusual for me to come home from a meeting with food. Whether it be Surly cupcakes from the Salty Tart bakery, Fisher Farms bacon from the Birchwood Cafe, or a whole heritage chicken from Jackson Hollow farm, I spend a lot of time talking about food, surrounded by food, and tempted by food. Still, even for me, it felt a bit strange to leave a meeting with my arms full of frozen, organic baby food: sweet potatoes, apples, a carrots/beets and rice combo, and more.