"Sustainability doesn't mean a thing if we can't get people to cook." -- Elissa Altman

"The more I work on these issues having to do with our whole food system, the more I realize that our problem is a cooking problem." -- Michael Pollan

The impressive growth...

Excerpted from Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots on the Pepper Trail, By Kurt Michael Friese, Kraig Kraft, and Gary Paul Nabhan. Visit their blog here.

One of the most delightful food discoveries for us in Mérida was xnipek (pronounced SHNEE-peck). The name comes from the Mayan language...

Remember all those videos you've seen lately depicting various forms of animal cruelty and other heinous practices in some large agribusiness facilities? Here's one I told you about last year. In Florida, the newly ensconced legislature is about to make the production of such videos a felony punishable...

Food and politics often come together in peculiar ways. It's not that their coming together at all is unusual -- far from it. Civilization and politics are both a direct result of agriculture. But these days, food's impact on political discourse can lead to some odd sights, such as free...

Good morning and welcome to day 2 of Edible Institute 2011. I'm you're host, Kurt Michael Friese, publisher of Edible Iowa River Valley. You are invited to follow me on Twitter (@KurtMFriese), visit my restaurant, check out my blog, and preorder my...

Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, CA and the 2011 edition of Edible Institute at the Hotel Mar Monte. Today and tomorrow I'll be liveblogging the goings on here for those of you who couldn't make it and for those who did but mighta missed something. Since...

In the rolling hills just north of Decorah sits an Iowa Treasure. It comes to mind around this time each year because it is time for our annual shopping spree - time to buy the seeds. My wife, Kim, and I may pour over a dozen catalogs, but we always...

A year ago this weekend, I enjoyed my first New Year's Eve off from work in 25 years. There are many reasons for this. First and foremost, being in the restaurant business means working when most others do not. On the other hand, having the best dang staff in town...

The year was 1957, and a blushing bride was nervously but dutifully helping in the kitchen at her first holiday feast with her new "big city" in-laws. The young groom's aunt Dorothy, culinary matriarch of the family, had been working away at the meal for days (as she always did)...

UPDATE: CHILD NUTRITION REAUTHORIZATION PASSES HOUSE. From CNN:

Among other things, the $4.5 billion measure provides more money to poor areas to subsidize free meals and requires schools to abide by health guidelines drafted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To help offset the higher cost of...

The rules involved in marketing and labeling food in this country can often be confusing or downright misleading. Case in point: the last time you had "wild rice," were you aware that it wasn't rice, and it is exceedingly unlikely that it was wild? Here's the story.

Though the English...

I know, it seems like a bizarre question in this day and age -- of course no sane, civilized member of a modern society would...

Under the ever-changing Sonoran Desert sky, straddling the Arizona-Mexico border, an unassuming little fruit has kept cool in the shade of cliff sides and larger plants for millennia. And while it thrives in these protected enclaves of the high desert, it packs heat matched only by the noonday sun.

Recently,...

A lot of ink, airtime, and media megabytes are being used to cover the huge number of elections going on all around the nation right now. One of the most important is getting very little coverage, even though it affects every single person in my home state and indeed the...

When each of us was in third grade, we learned the legend of John Chapman, a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed. We were taught of his beneficence, and we marveled over the Disney-esque pen and ink drawings of him wandering barefoot through the woods, tin pot on his head, followed by an assortment...

In college towns like mine all across the US local authorities have run out of patience for the traditional beer-soaked tailgate parties. More specifically, they have run out of patience for the people in some of those parties, whom I've heard referred to by Iowa City's Finest as "knuckleheads." These...

You see them everywhere -- in restaurants, wine shops, gift catalogs and websites -- fancy wine glasses costing anywhere from $10 to over $80 per stem, and you wonder, "Does the type of glass I drink my wine from make a difference?" The answer is, conditionally, yes it does.

It's...

When beginning their preparations for the coming Autumn holidays, and considering desserts, most Americans think immediately of pumpkin pie. Allow me to suggest a second, perhaps more truly American alternative for your autumn celebrations: pecan pie.

Why "more truly American"? Well, OK it is true that the pumpkin is a...

Note: This post is my submission for FoodBuzz.com's Project Food Blog, a 12-week blogslam to find "The Next Food Blog Star" among over 1800 participants. I'd appreciate your help: vote for this entry here. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

I'm aboard the...

DAY 4 - 16 Sep 2010

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Good morning again and welcome to the continued liveblog from the 2010 Professional Food Writers Symposium at the Greenbrier. For those who have missed out thus far, The Symposium has...