This post from Herbivoraceous, praising the food cart scene in Portland and Seattle, makes me incredibly jealous. We here in DC have nothing like what he describes: where Portland’s food carts are apparently ubiquitous, creative, delicious, and vegetarian-friendly, DC’s are mostly… just not there. I know that the District used to have incredibly tight regulations [...]
Today, I went to the DC Green Festival. It’s a big, expo-style event with exhibitors, food, workshops, and super-star speakers. Think of it as a who’s who of green businesses and green thought leaders. It’s organized by Green America and Equal Exchange, two amazing non-profits in the green space. It’s a great event, with a [...]
I promised in my last post, about homemade tomato sauce, that I’d soon write about the gnocchi I made to go with the sauce. I’m overdue in sharing. The truth is, I started making the gnocchi with the thought of writing about how easy it was, how it seems so intimidating but really it’s a [...]
The more cookbooks and food blogs I read, the more I find a widespread derision for canned beans. Canned beans, the discussion goes, are so far inferior to freshly-cooked dried beans that no self-respecting foodie would ever use them. I’m perplexed by the apparent strength of feeling many cooks have for the subject. Sure, dried [...]
I remember when my mom used to make popsicles when I was a kid. She had a set of plastic molds, and for at least a few years there were always popsicles in the freezer for summer snacks, and they were so good. We used all kinds of juices, and they were the perfect way [...]
I don’t cook a lot of chili, perhaps because I associate it with meat. But when my coworker invited me to her Chili Bowl party yesterday, I couldn’t resist. I was starting at a disadvantage – when you think of chili, the first words that come to mind are probably “meaty” and “spicy”. Mine could [...]
Last winter I was on a serious local foods kick, because I was doing a lot of reading, and the result was that I bought and ate fewer vegetables, because so little is local around here in the winter. This winter, I gave myself permission to buy whatever out-of-season vegetables I wanted, especially if they [...]
Start with corn, grown on a big farm in Iowa. Pick it, ship it off to a factory. Grind it up, separate it, mix it up with enzymes and catalysts and all sorts of complex chemical processes; out comes high-fructose corn syrup and a number of other products, like stabilizers and preservatives and the like. [...]
Apparently you can now get pre-packaged, refrigerated breakfast cereal, complete with milk. I have to ask: why? Is even just-add-water packaged/flavored oatmeal too hard? For about 50 cents you can combine your own cereal, milk, and sweetener in a bowl and microwave it for a couple minutes, getting something that’s probably healthier and definitely made [...]
Here in DC, we had a long, slow end to the summer, but it’s finally starting to feel like autumn. And with that, it feels like time for apples. I have very strong seasonal associations for apples – though they tend to be eaten all year round, my childhood memories of September weekend trips out [...]