Spanish steps to the perfect summer soup.Like Penelope Cruz, my restaurant has a Spanish accent. I can't quite say "theme," because the menu is far from 100 percent Spanish; but we focus on tapas and serve classic preperations like paella and sangria. This time of year, our Spanish lilt mandates gazpacho. Some of the best dishes in the world were invented via that great mother, necessity: the necessity to get by on very little, or to make use of a soon-to-spoil abundance. Witness cassoulet, prosciutto, gumbo, quiche, bouillabaisse, pesto, etc. Gazpacho falls on the abundance side of that truism, as it …

A crop duster in action.Photo: Roger Smith via FlickrGrinnell Heritage Farm is 152 years old. Andrew Dunham is the fifth generation of his family to work this land about 50 miles east of Des Moines. He is a direct descendant of Josiah Grinnell, founder of the town and the man Horace Greeley once famously quoted as having said, "Go west, young man, go west." Andrew and his wife Melissa are a few months shy of receiving their formal certification as an organic farm. Across the road, due north of their land, is a field of corn that is managed by …

Stick a spork in it: Is this really the best we can do?Photo: bookgrlA few years ago I was asked to serve on the Wellness Committee that was being formed by the Iowa City School District, under a federal mandate to improve the health of school children. Having made lunch every morning for my kids because I'd seen the "food" they were served in the cafeterias, I was pleased to have the opportunity. The result of my nearly two years of banging my head against the brick wall of district bureaucracy was the living example of the old Upton Sinclair …

The chefs of "Lambstravaganza."The best part about my work with Slow Food USA is getting to experience new people, places, and especially great foods. Such was the case this past weekend as I traveled to join the members of Slow Food St. Louis for their fourth annual "Lambstravaganza" at Prairie Grass Farms just outside of New Florence, Mo. Prairie Grass Farms is in the capable hands of its third generation of Hillebrands. Dave Hillebrand runs the farm now, having inherited it from his father and grandfather before him. There they used to raise primarily row crops, but Dave took an …

War is peace, junk food is real food....Nobody likes hypocrites, despite the fact that everyone is a hypocrite to one degree or another: the smoker who tells her kids not to smoke; the closeted politician who works against gay rights; the police officer who throws the book at stoners but who himself gets high. But in the matter of marketing food, hypocrisy reaches a fever pitch. Take last month's flap about Oprah Winfrey's KFC promotion. While the MSM focused on the feeding frenzy that ensued, and the near-riots when KFCs across the country ran out of food or people couldn't …

ZJ Farms: Everyone's a farmhandI had the pleasure the other day of visiting ZJ Farms, the anchor of Local Harvest CSA, which is one of the biggest in the area. Farmer (and pillar of the local food scene hereabouts) Susan Jutz has been running this organic farm for all the years I've been buying food around here. A walk on her farm gives you an understanding of the paintings of Grant Wood. In case you're unfamiliar, CSA means community-supported agriculture --a new name for what family-scale farming used to be. These days it works very much like a magazine subscription. …

My dear friend Deborah Madison has created a delightful book called What We Eat When We Eat Alone, an investigation into some of our most intimate moments.  When no one is looking, no one is judging, and your most secret cravings can come out, what do you eat? And how? As a companion/intro, Deb has created this YouTube video (less than 5 minutes long -- watch below) interviewing a few of the many people she spoke to for the book.  All walks of life are there, and the responses are fascinating, tell-tale vignettes in their own right.  Illustrations are provided …

Leaves of sassbeckyannisonGardeners and gastronomes fawn over sorrel -- and almost everyone else ignores it. That's a shame. An early-spring green with brash lemony flavor that comes from an abundance of oxalic acid, sorrel is a powerful addition to soups and sauces, and tasty in salads when picked young. The herb is classified in the genus Rumex, and its origins lie somewhere in what is now Russia, where the Ural Mountains divide Asia from Europe. It was well known in Roman times, though not cultivated since it was plentiful in the wild. Culinary historians find it falling in and out …

Get thee to a CAFO!Photo: pubwvjIn a recent op-ed, in The New York Times gravely informed its readers that free-range pork is deadly stuff. Despite evidence that incidence of trichinosis is very rare in the US--about 40 cases a year, and mostly caused by eating wild game (usually bear)-James E. McWilliams says that pork laced with the deadly parasite is just one example of how locavores are “endangering the future of food.”  Mr. McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University also wrote in the Times 2 years back that measuring food miles was bunk and that they were not …

On-ramp to flavorPhoto: dano272Early-spring walks in the woods are rewarding on their own. But while you  enjoy those first few sunny days after a nourishing spring rain, why not look for things that can feed your belly as well as your soul?  The woodlands here in the upper Midwest are teeming with gourmet goodies in the spring, and this abundance is there for the taking--if you just know where to look. Gathering wild foods is probably the most sustainable, and certainly the most ancient way to provide delicious and nourishing local food for your family.  It dates back to before …