Growing Carrots: Red, Yellow, Purple and Orange
There’s an exciting world out there of diverse carrot varieties — yellows, purples, and reds — which offer distinct tastes and textures. Farmer Shari Sirkin of Dancing Roots Farm talks about some of the carrot varieties she grows on her farm, including the Shin Kuroda that she is harvesting now.
How to Make Rutabaga Carrot Ginger Soup
Winter is the season for eating fresh, root vegetables, and Kathryn Yeomans of The Farmer’s Feast shows us how to make a hearty vegetable soup to warm the soul, and fill the belly. The key to making a good soup is allowing for adequate cooking times, and freshness (taste) of the ingredients that make up the soup.
A Critical Head Start for Preschoolers: Eating Healthy Foods
Head Start began as an eight-week demonstration project in 1965 to help break the cycle of poverty, providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs. Since then it has become the nation’s largest federally funded early child care and education program for children zero to five years old.
Coming Next: Culinary Knives
- Tuesday
Melinda Cassidy of Portland’s Culinary Workshop demonstrates some of the essential knife skills to make food preparation easier in the home kitchen. - Wednesday
Arnon Kartmazov learned the ancient craft of the blacksmith from a number of masters while apprenticing in both Israel and Japan. In addition to learning iron forging techniques as a “smithy”, and more specialized skills making samurai swords, Kartmazov learned how to make exquisite Japanese culinary knives. We visit Kartmazov in his shop in Portland, Oregon, and see his work in action. - Thursday
Arnon Kartmazov displays some of his remarkable collection of culinary knives he has hand forged into existence. Combining artistic vision with craft, Kartmazov describes the characteristics that define a quality kitchen knife, and his perspective on making them.
The Weekly Roundup
- Hundred-year-old oyster farm shut down (Marin Independent Journal)
The Interior Secretary is shutting down Drake’s Bay Oyster Farm so that the Point Reyes area can return to its natural state. The company employed 30 people and the owners were stewards of the water where they grew millions of oysters every year. - Rural school district serves as a model for providing healthy meals (EdSource)
“Not every child will go to college, but every child can go on and live a healthy life,” says the district’s food services director. - Crockpot apple butter (A Baker’s House)
This stays fresh a couple weeks, or you can preserve it for later. - Vacant lots in Phoenix turn into gardens, offering refugees a taste of home (NY Times)
Phoenix’s real estate bust has given refugees from other lands the chance to grow crops native to their own lands. - Raising backyard chickens (Cooking Up a Story)
- Single-serving homemade yogurt using a crockpot (One Tomato, Two Tomato)
- Smithsonian Exhibit: Food in America, 1950 to 2000 (CNN)
- Strawbales provide foundation for sustainable building (Sunflower Horizons)
Step-by-step photos and construction video. - Turn farmers market cider into hard cider (Food52)
- Going undercover in a factory farm (Grist)
Meet the den mother for undercover Humane Society investigators. - Donuts made from leftover mashed potatoes (Serious Eats)
- Maple syrup, moose and the impact of climate change in Northwest forests (ScienceDaily)
- Christmas in a jar (Punk Domestics/Wife Meets Life)
Cranberry conserve recipe that makes a great holiday gift. - Global development podcast: Farmers, GM crops and the future of agriculture (Guardian UK)
Debate among British food leaders, UN representative. - Real cooks use a mortar and pestle (WBUR Boston Public Radio)
In kitchens throughout the world, there’s one piece of technology that’s been the same since the Stone Age: the mortar and pestle. - The cotton kingdom: A photographic essay (Afroculinaria)
Judaics teacher and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty (who focuses on the foodways of Africa, enslaved African Americans, African America and the African and Jewish diasporas) explores cotton picking. - Professors aim to make healthy eating easier for food bank recipients (Zester)
These professors were early proponents of getting fresh produce into food banks. Then they realized that people didn’t know what to do with it. So they enlisted the help of a chef and put together recipes that used only ingredients found in food banks — recipes that could be cooked by someone with limited kitchen equipment and no cooking skills.