Eat Food, Mostly Plants, Not too Much

...ays to deal with these supermarket conundrums by learning to grow your own food. Journalist Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, recently wrote an editorial, “Why Bother” in the New York Times Magazine arguing that it’s time for us all to think about planting some vegetables. He has a new book, In Defense of Food an Eater’s Manifesto, that addresses the ethical decisions we face in our trips to the supermarket. In this engaging, hour...

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World’s Skinniest Farm Planted in Brookline, MA

...alk and chain-link fence. It’s also our hope to remind people that healthy vegetables can be grown in all sorts of environments, not just farms or big yards or community garden plots. The 200 Foot Garden is also a way to bring together neighbors in a project designed to share good things with the people around us. The project is headed by Patrick and Tracy Gabridge. In our everyday lives, Patrick is a novelist and playwright, and Tracy is a librar...

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Thomas Pynchon on Pizza

...riously of bottled hollandaise or joint compound, and the options were all vegetables rigorously organic, whose high water content saturated, long before it baked through, a stone-ground twelve-grain crust with the lightness and digestibility of a manhole cover. Pynchon being Pynchon, pizza appears frequently in his novels as a multi-valiant symbol. In Vineland it’s a symbol of the Dharma wheel and the eight-fold path of Buddhism (pizza is usually...

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Rapini is the New Broccoli

...the brassica family and is closely related to the turnip. And, unlike most vegetables found in our supermarkets, it actually tastes like something, with a mustardy bitterness I really love. I planted about 18 square feet worth and Mrs. Homegrown and I have been eating it for weeks tossed in pasta, omelets and on its own. Both the flowerettes and the leaves are edible. The plant continues to send up flowers even after the center one is picked, so y...

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The Root Simple 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

...es? How about our friends the Italians? They know a few things about tasty vegetables. My favorite source for years has been Franchi, a family owned company that dates back to the 18th century. Franchi’s American importer is Seeds From Italy. But wait, what about climate change and drought for those of us in the arid Southwest? That’s were Native Seed/SEARCH comes in. Silva Ranger 515 Compass Let’s say you don’t want to end up wandering in the des...

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