Though often overlooked, fresh garlic is abundant at many summer and early fall local farmers markets. We take garlic for granted. It’s reliably in the grocery store year-round and doesn’t look much different from season to season. But according to Cher Smith of Bugtussle Farm, in Gamaliel, Kentucky, which offers CSA shares in Nashville, Tennessee,…
Maintaining—and harvesting—a patch of common milkweed can help monarch butterflies survive while providing us foraged food as well. The monarch butterfly—Danaus plexippus, if you prefer its scientific name—is in a very vulnerable place right now. These butterflies have a delicate existence in which their reproduction depends upon the milkweeds. There are 73 distinct species of…
Five years ago, Diego Marlar, co-owner and founder of Stone Lizard Hops Farm in Belen, was enjoying a beer at a local brewery when he asked the bartender where the brewery sourced its hops. To his surprise, the answer, as it is for most New Mexico breweries, was the Pacific Northwest. Although the craft…
Ancient heritage is made modern. Most people think of hops as a bittering and aromatic ingredient in beer, but its original use was probably as a healing and preservative agent. Various sources document written evidence of hops for medicinal and other purposes at least by Roman times: Pliny the Elder (23-79 O.C.E.) describes hops as…
A pile of #2’s says summertime, unrushed afternoons, and a morning spent with dipnet in hand. There’s just something uninspired—something ostentatious—about ordering jumbos. Demanding the biggest crabs the Bay has to offer, hulking battle-scarred survivors who have bypassed a billion crab pots only to end up savaged by your Carvel Hall knife. Go to any…
