The Humble Root

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.

Seasonal Salads: Winter

I 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.

From Cara Cara to Kumquats: Seasonal Citrus

If 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.

Failure to Cultivate: A Response to Caitlin Flanagan on School Gardens

Not 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!

Green Holiday Entertaining

We 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.

Feast of Seven Fishes

Ask 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.

Where’s Your Beef Been?

It used to be simple. You’d hear “Beef: It’s what’s for dinner®,” grab a steak, a roast or some burger, cook it and eat it. No questions, no fuss. But then different messages started cropping up and a seed of concern and confusion is planted, about how the beef you’re eating affects the health of your family, the health of the earth. Here’s a guide to understanding the jargon so that you can decide what’s for dinner.

7 Super Sustainable Seafood Picks – 2009

As grateful as I am for the seafood guides out there, I wanted a short list of sustainable fish that were healthy and easy to understand so I could still choose wisely if I was caught without my pocket guide. So here they are: Nourish Network's Seven Super Sustainable Seafood Picks.

Thanksgiving Roundup

It’s been a fun month, pondering traditions, forging new paths and sharing some of our favorite recipes. In fact, we’ve accumulated so much good stuff that we thought it worth creating a roundup before the Big Day. Gratitude: We kicked the month off, appropriately, with a piece by Kurt Michael Friese on gratitude. And I…

A Story of Heritage Turkey

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Turkey is the iconic American bird. The species is native to the Americas, but many of the breeds that populated our country’s agricultural landscape throughout the centuries were a mix of indigenous wild turkeys and domesticated ones bred in Europe from stock originally exported from the New World. To me, though, turkeys are a living illustration of how much our country’s food culture has changed in the past fifty years. Read on for more of the story . . .