On the Table

A few Saturdays ago, as my husband and I were roaming the Arcata Farmers’ Market, we met a neighbor. She asked whether I was buying zucchini from the stall in front of us. I had in fact written in a recent Table Talk (“Zucchini Season,” July 7) that I buy zucchini by default every time […]

Hooray, it’s summer! And it totally is less crappy thus far than last summer. Sun, bearable wind, not too much rain. While I appreciate our temperate clime, I sometimes long for the psychologically comforting seasonal delineators of Actual Weather Changes. In the Midwest and back East, seasons are specific. There’s snow. You wear a big […]

There is no middle of the road with fish tacos. People who haven’t tried one furrow their collective brow at the idea. “Fish? In a taco?” Those who have tasted the truth revel in the delight that is the perfect fish taco. They tend to be gloriously dogmatic in their conviction that we should all […]

Seeing freshly picked zucchini at the Farmers’ Market gets me into a celebratory mood. I admit that I get excited about many kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables, each one for a different reason. With zucchini, it is a desire to make amends. I did not get along with zucchini during the first part of […]

MyPlate, the USDA’s new symbol of dietary correctness, was unveiled on June 2. It replaces the agency’s Eating Right Pyramid (est. 1992), which succeeded the Four Basic Food Groups (1956). Those four in turn represented a consolidation of the seven food groups the agency pushed in the 1940s, pared down from 12 during the Great […]

As the season progresses, a wider variety of fresh fruit and vegetables becomes available at the Arcata Farmers’ Market. But from the very first day, Swiss chard could be purchased from several farmers. If you managed to walk all around the Plaza last Saturday and go home without any chard in your basket, you’ll have […]

Sometimes I long for the simple days of classic American cooking and culturally assigned gender roles. Ah, to be a woman trapped in the kitchen, with five squalling brats and an apron collection fit to beat the band. That’s the problem with today, all these exhausting options and freedoms. Not only do I have to […]

The dark brown, pleasantly bitter, chemically complex substance we know of as chocolate bears little resemblance to the pulp-surrounded seeds of the cocoa plant from which it is produced. One would never suspect that one could be derived from the other. — Sophie and Michael Coe, The True History of Chocolate In a space inside […]

“The purpose of Food First is to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger.” — Food First mission statement   Food activist, agroecologist and political economist Eric Holt-Giménez came here last week as part of HSU’s Sustainable Futures series to speak about solutions to the root causes of the global food crisis. Coauthor of the book […]

Yes, Passover started at sundown on Monday. For a Jewish girl like me it’s Pesach and time for Elijah’s cup. For most of you it just means you’ll see a display with matzoh at the grocery store, probably not far from the Easter candy. I always thought once I lived in Brooklyn I’d eat a lot of […]

MoM 2011

Carrots love garlic, and garlic doesn’t mind carrots. Those are some conclusions I reached last year when I finally got sick of looking at all the blank space between my garlic plants and decided to do something about it. They’re planted six inches apart, and if it weren’t for the straw mulch between them, most […]