farmers market

Eggs and Green Garlic

10 May 2011

Eggs signal spring in a way that goes well beyond Easter and egg-dyeing. If we followed old-world cycles of life, we’d eat eggs in the spring, chicken in the fall. And although I eat eggs year-round, I acknowledge that spring farm eggs, with their carotene-loaded orange yolks, stand apart. (By comparison, winter eggs are downright [...]

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On the Farm: A trip to Heritage Prairie

19 November 2010

Chicago has been awash in Michelin Star buzz. The awards have been described as good, bad, and plain unexpected. Just the same, they have given Chicago’s food culture a lot to crow about. Now, the reality check. All we need to do to be reminded about how much more we have to learn about food [...]

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A Piece of Cheese Culture

4 November 2010

Sometimes when I go about learning something new, I become so overwhelmed with information that I stick to one narrow fact to help me differentiate styles and belief systems. For instance, when visiting wine producers in southern Italy to research A16 Food + Wine, I focused on trellising systems. If I could understand the differences [...]

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Weekday Braised Cabbage

2 November 2010

Although fall is well underway, the first frost of the year is the clearest indication that summer cooking is really, truly over. Even though I still have a few cherry tomatoes on the counter from last weekend’s trip to the Madison farmers market, they seem at odds with the rest of the my produce—three unidentified [...]

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How to Like Eggplant

9 September 2010

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as the saying goes. Which is why I found myself staring at several small eggplants. I like eggplant. My friend Nora does not. So she gave me a bagful from her CSA. For eggplant haters–and there are a lot of you out there–it’s a slimy, strange, bitter vegetable, [...]

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A Moment for Zucchini Bread

12 August 2010

I‘ve been meaning to make zucchini bread for a while now. I had to do something to control the endless supply of zucchini we’ve encountered this summer. They’re at the market and in friends’ yards. There were more than a few in the CSA box—for several weeks in a row. When my mom came to [...]

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Sisters in Seattle, part III: Spain Strikes Back

21 July 2010

Old news: Spain won the World Cup. My uncle Miguel was probably delighted. (He’s Basque and Mexican; his business partner is an ardent fan of Ar-hen-tina. Miguel’s migraines would have returned if Lionel Messi had been able to connect with the back of the net enough times to advance the Argentina team to the finals. [...]

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Sisters in Seattle, part I

15 July 2010

I was finally able to sneak off to Seattle for a long overdue visit with my sister (the one with the Seattle dumpling connection) and her boyfriend. After three days of market visits, neighborhood tours, and a World Cup final thrown in for good measure, I’m wondering what took me so long. Seattle has what [...]

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Radishes, Beets, and Turnips, Oh My!

1 July 2010

It was a family kitchen emergency. My cousin Kristina had received produce (pictured above) from her CSA (community supported agriculture) program in Maine.  The selection of radishes, turnips, and beets made for a nice arrangement, but they were items that ordinarily didn’t find their way into Kristina’s shopping basket. It’s not that my cousin had [...]

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Seattle’s Hot for Dumplings

19 June 2010

This next installment is from MMM’s Seattle bureau, reported by my intrepid sister, Maureen. It’s about hot Asian dumplings at a farmers market near you, if you happen to live in Seattle. Thomasin Levin and Jen Lim, two restaurant veterans (pictured far right below, Thomasin on the left), decided to go it alone with handmade [...]

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