In May 2011, we set out across the country to tell the stories of real food in America with our series, The Perennial Plate. Since then, we've recorded seven terabytes of footage, traveled 23,000 miles across 42 states, and made 50 short films (one a week for a year). This video comprises some of our favorite moments from the road.

Editor's note: This recipe provides a nice break from the standard strawberry-rhubarb combination. It's also a great excuse to try canning. If you're new to making and preserving your own jam, Marisa's blog, Food in Jars, is filled with excellent tips.

Photo by Marisa McClellan.

Vanilla-rhubarb jam
Makes four pints

Ingredients

10 cups of chopped rhubarb (approximately 2 1/2 pounds of stalks)
5 cups sugar
1 cup Earl Grey tea (you could just use water; I happened to have some leftover tea around and it added a nice note to the finished product)
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1 lemon, juiced
Pinch of salt
1 packet liquid pectin

According to this chart from the CDC, fast-food burgers have more than tripled in size since the 1950s, going from four ounces (i.e. a quarter pound) to a whopping 12. And if you think that's bad, the average soda is six times as big as it used to be.

How do you make fruits and vegetables fun, instead of just good for you and better for the planet than meat? Well, probably not by doing elaborate tattoo designs on a banana. But it's easy, so why not?

Meg Paska with one of her chickens. (All photographs by Valery Rizzo/Nona Brooklyn.)

It’s a dreamy combination of hipster clichés: an urban farming-themed pop-up store made of salvaged materials. In Brooklyn. Maybe that’s why, when Hayseed’s Big City Farm Supply opened at the beginning of April, founder Meg Paska thought, “We're going to get mocked.” But mockery did not ensue; instead, an enthusiastic community response showed that Paska was on to something with this small, seasonal shop catering to the needs of people growing food and raising animals in the city.

Paska, who blogs about her own backyard garden, chicken coop, and beehive at Brooklyn Homesteader, started Hayseed’s with the folks who run Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm in Queens. The store will be around until early July in a space Paska rented from the design studio Domestic Construction. We chatted with Paska recently about the project.

Q. How did Hayseed’s Big City Farm Supply come together?

A. My business partners and I both kind of have our own urban farm things going on. We were talking one night over beers, and we both admitted that we had thought about opening a farm store. But we were concerned about retail spaces being really expensive. We kept our ears to the ground and hoped that something would present itself, and it did. A bunch of friends of mine had posted a Kickstarter campaign for a design studio a few blocks from my house. They were going to try and save the lot next to their studio and turn it into an urban farm. I asked them how they would feel about hosting a pop-up store, and they were really into the idea. Their studio is in a big mechanic’s garage. They rented out the front space to us and then actually built out a storefront with pallets and old wood. We didn’t spend a single cent on materials; they built it all with salvaged objects.

OK, this is a pretty oversimplified depiction of the relationship between corporate interests, farmers, and consumers -- but that means it's a good starting point for anyone who isn't sure how subsidies for corn and soy led to a food system where processed crap is not only common but, for many people, inescapable. And it takes less than four minutes to watch!

Photo by Chiot's Run.

If you’ve noticed more carrot-crunching, more orange-peeling, and an abundance of leafy green salads lately, it’s probably not a coincidence. As The Washington Post reported earlier this week, Americans eat more fresh foods than they did five years ago.

The WaPo story was based on a national phone survey conducted by the Kellogg Foundation, which found that the majority of Americans are trying to eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, are shopping at farmers markets at least on occasion, and say they know “a lot or a little about where their fresh fruits and vegetables come from.” These findings are interesting -- and they speak to the success of a whole array of efforts to get more of us cooking, examining what we eat, and honing in on the place where healthy and truly delicious foods intersect.

Less visible in the media landscape is the fact that the Kellogg Foundation survey also suggests that all this healthy eating has Americans looking outside themselves.

Photo by Steve Ryan.

It’s always nice when someone writes an article so you don’t have to. In this case it was New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who has been doing the thankless job of writing about the health risks of toxic chemicals in our environment, as well as the politicization of the regulatory process that’s supposed to be in place.

From arsenic in chicken feed to cancer-causing chemicals to endocrine disruptors, Kristof has given new visibility to a critical issue: how toxic chemicals affect us, and how reluctant our government has been to protect us.

Photo by Ben Williams.

Filmmaker Hailey Wist's documentary The Garden Summer is the true story of five strangers picked to live on a farm, work together, and have their lives taped. Wist recruited four other good-looking 20-something suburbanites to spend the summer on an Arkansas farm, getting all their food (except booze, coffee, and cooking oil) either from their own garden or from within a 100-mile radius.

So what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real on a farm? Well, like the original MTV reprobates, they drink, get in arguments, and have romantic entanglements, sometimes with the same people. But they also learn about where their food comes from, and about wasting less and living simpler.

Counter to everything Republicans say, building the Keystone XL could raise gas prices.

Please, parents, don't buy your children trendy pets in imitation of popular book characters. In England, hundreds of Harry Potter-inspired pet owls are being dropped off at animal shelters after their owners realized that they're expensive to care for and don't actually carry mail.

A magnitude-6 earthquake in Italy may have damaged 300,000 ripening wheels of Parmesan cheese -- 5 percent of Italy's supply.