Should you choose local, organic, none or both? How do you make smart sustainable picks at the seafood counter and beyond? Like it or not, your food buys have an impact on the earth. Here, articles and recipes to help you eat with an “eco-clean” conscience.
Featured Article
By Kurt Michael Friese
When researching the history and lore of a particular food, something I do with perhaps more frequency than the average person, one of my favorite resources to turn to is the late Waverly Root, an American journalist assigned to Paris for most of his career, and his indispensable Food: An Authoritative Visual History and Dictionary of the Foods of the World. And, honestly, how could I not turn to Root when writing about three often overlooked winter vegetables: turnips, parsnips and rutabagas? Despite the fact that in our modern day they play second fiddle to carrots, these three are wonderful, hearty winter fare, delicious in a mash with other root vegetables, in soups and stews, or roasted in the oven until crisp and savory. They are also well appreciated in the lean months because of their long shelf life and low cost.
Turnips. In his tome, Root describes…
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Seasonal Salads: WinterI realized something funny recently. Long after I started branching out into seasonal fruits and vegetables, my salads remained stuck in the rut of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions. Sure, the lettuce had morphed into “mesclun mix” and the tomatoes had turned into heirlooms, but it took some time before my insistence upon seasonal produce progressed into my salad bowl.
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From Cara Cara to Kumquats: Seasonal CitrusIf you think of citrus as the ubiquitous orange globes you see year-round at the supermarket, you’ve got an experience coming; winter is the prime season for most citrus and, as with most seasonal produce, there’s an exciting variety. A blood orange, with its bitter beauty, or a perfumey Meyer lemon, for instance, are exquisite examples of the joys of seasonal eating.
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Failure to Cultivate: A Response to Caitlin Flanagan on School GardensNot sure how many of you saw, but recently in the Atlantic there was a scathing commentary by Caitlin Flanagan condemning school gardens. Nourish Network Contributor, Kurt Michael Friese, wrote a beautiful rebuttal on Civil Eats (a worthy site to visit for anyone who wants to explore sustainable agriculture and food systems and how they shape our world), and was kind enough to share it with us here. Thank you, Kurt!
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Green Holiday EntertainingWe turned once again to our Green Entertaining Expert, Nicole Aloni, this time for tips on how to green our holiday parties a bit. And boy did she deliver; from how to invite to what to imbibe, Nicole shares how to make a softer impact on the environment this season.
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Feast of Seven FishesAsk an Italian what’s on the menu for the holidays and odds are good there will be fish. A lot of fish. For many Italian families Christmas Eve dinner is synonymous with La Festa dei Sette Pesci, the Feast of Seven Fishes. A holiday of eco-friendly roots that, once again, point to the wisdom of traditional ways.
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