New York City: A lot of unusual things happen beneath the surface here. You don't notice most of them until someone points them out. Madani Halal slaughterhouse is a great example; it's down a backstreet in a little-known neighborhood in Queens. Every day, folks line up around the corner to choose their own live chicken or goat, watch it get slaughtered, and then take it home for dinner. In this video, we meet Imran Uddin, who left a career in corporate advertising to run the business his father started in 1996. He shows us the process and talks about how the business …

Farms aren't the first thing that come to mind when one thinks of New York City. But walk along its streets and you will pass hundreds of urban gardens; jump across its rooftops and you might find yourself in the middle of a commercial farm. Heck, drive just 20 minutes from downtown and you could discover a full-fledged experimental farming community. New York has a lot to offer -- farming is no exception. This week, we visited three very different farmers and heard their take on the city and how growing food plays a role in (and is influenced by) …

Turkey gets a lot of airtime this week. There a million recipes to brine, baste, smoke, and stuff the bird as well as a plethora of ways to make mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato pie. So I decided to do a little twist on our traditional Thanksgiving meal and take a "road less traveled" with the ole standbys:  Leek, celery root, and pumpkin seed stuffing Raw brussel sprouts and wild rice salad Mashed sunchokes Get the recipes here.

Join us on a bug hunt with David Gracer, an entomophagy (bug eating) expert who makes a pretty good case for making wider culinary use of insects. In a world of factory farms and genetically modified foods, catching your own eight-legged friends might just be the sensible way to go. And chances are, you eat bugs every day. Watch us cook up and taste a wide variety of crickets, grasshoppers and other critters. Yum.

We see lobster served in fancy restaurants so often that it's easy to forget there are places where it is caught and sold for under $3 a pound. We recently spent time in Maine -- home of some of the world's best lobsters -- and familiarized ourselves with the process of catching these amazing shellfish. We got on a lobster boat at 4:00 am to film a day on the job. From there we got to see a gorgeous sunrise, and watched this lobsterman and his daughter pull in traps for hours, then throw back the small (or very large) …

Most of the seaweed we get these days is farmed. But way up in northern Maine, Larch Hanson is still harvesting it wild in its many varieties on the rugged coast. This video isn't about the details of that process, however. It's about the essence of life for Larch, who rises at dawn to cut seaweed and then writes Zen poems about it. Learn more about Larch on his website.

Intentional community, draft horses, and farmstead cheese. If it sounds like we're in Vermont, that's because we are! This short film takes place at Cobb Hill, a cohousing and farming community, where residents work together and share resources to create what they call the "homebase food system." We got to watch them make cheese, run their CSA, and we shared our fantastic corn chowder recipe with the community.

There are those who farm for food, those who farm for money, those who farm because it's what they have always done. And then there are the Stollers. This family in central Ohio farms for spiritual reasons. They raise organic dairy cows and practice a way of life that is simple, beautiful, and in real connection with the land and each other. Similar to Mennonites and the Amish, they have chosen a life outside of mainstream culture. We spent two days with this family and, despite our differences, we fell in love with their way of life.

After years of neglect and decay, there's a lot of excitement in Detroit these days. All over the city, once-abandoned lots are being turned into thriving urban farms. In this video, we follow Greg and Olivia from Detroit Dirt and Brother Nature Produce. They have an acre of empty-lot land that they've turned into a small farm. They're also developing a compost center in the city for easy farmer access. Food52 coordinated the volunteers for the day. Watch the video here and check out Food52's account of the events.

We are interrupting the linear flow of our cross-country trip to bring you an episode from upstate New York. The flooding that resulted from Hurricane Irene (followed a week later by tropical rains that reflooded farms in New York and Vermont) was devastating. Late summer is time most farmers have been working for all year, and when your crop gets wiped out, it can mean losing the bulk of your income. Such is the story of Pete Taliaferro and Ray Bradley, who appear in this video. We hope our viewers remember that although this storm has left the headlines, people …