From the category archives:

Grassroots

Farms, local food and thoughtful commerce

Blackberries unplugged

July 31, 2010 Brainy

It’s the height of summer. Berry season. We’ve been picking and freezing great quantities of strawberries and blueberries. Raspberries are next, if we can catch them before they’re gone. Then the blackberries begin.  And that’s got me thinking.  About Block Island, RI, one of our favorite places on the planet, about the blackberries that grow wild there, and also [...]

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My kind of carnival: Healthy kids. No fried dough.

July 21, 2010 Eco

A new Spoonfed post is coming very soon. (So much for stockpiling posts before vacation.) In the meantime, I’m participating in a new monthly blog carnival sponsored by Healthy Child Healthy World, a non-profit that is all about protecting kids from chemicals where they live, play and learn (food included). This month’s theme, “Splendor in the Grass,” explores [...]

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Clean food and dirty kids

June 30, 2010 Eco

There came a moment during strawberry-picking last week when the 6-year-olds decided they’d had enough. While the grown-ups continued busily picking a flat apiece, my daughter and her friend snuck off to the shade for a drink and a snack. Then the girls plopped themselves in the dirt and set to work, drawing roads and concocting [...]

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Real food on the road

June 6, 2010 Grassroots

Summertime. When the living is easy, road trips entice, and that road is paved with fast food and greasy spoons. What to do, what to do. As a longtime vegetarian, I’ve been bringing food on the road for years, if only a few bananas and granola bars to get me through the gauntlet of golden arches. When [...]

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Pesticide, organic and other dirty words

May 20, 2010 Brainy

“Organic” was an early word in my now 6-year-old’s vocabulary. (She pronounced it “ga-nan-ic.” Tell me that’s not adorable.) It’s also one of the first words she learned to spell, which is why we have progressively more readable versions written on random bits of paper and newsprint. So when we go grocery shopping, Tess takes pride in pointing [...]

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“Food Inc.”: Family viewing?

April 21, 2010 Brainy

In honor of Earth Day, PBS is showing the movie “Food Inc.” tonight. So I’m pulling out a review I wrote for one of my columns last spring. Are you planning to watch? Or recording it to watch later with your kids? (See our plans below.) You’ll never look at food the same way again. I promise. [...]

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The art of local food: kindergartners, Kahlo and kale

April 15, 2010 Brainy

It’s April. Not exactly high time for local foods in western New York. But there we were with my daughter’s kindergarten class at the public market, counting dollars (five each) and loading up on produce for an art project later that afternoon. I’d stumbled across a contest called Be Aware of New York Agriculture, which asks kids [...]

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Color me annoyed

April 9, 2010 Consumeristic

I’m working with my daughter’s school on a project about local food, so Wednesday I stopped in for a little show-and-tell about the sort of food that grows in New York vs. elsewhere. (Apples and grapes, natch. Pineapples and mangoes, nada.) I’ll admit I had visions of doing my own Jamie Oliver-style Q&A, complete with a dramatic reveal and confused kids. But thankfully my 5- [...]

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“You can’t tell that to a kid”

March 29, 2010 Brainy

Can kids handle the truth about industrial meat? We have a great living-history museum nearby. One of those places with relocated old buildings and re-enactors who make you feel like you’ve slipped back to the 19th century. During a visit last year, I was in the kitchen of one of the homes churning butter with [...]

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Maple syrup: natural and sweet. Just like our kids.

March 25, 2010 Brainy

I’ll say up front that I don’t like fake maple syrup. And not only because it doesn’t contain any maple. (Most brands are a mix of high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives and artificial flavors.) It’s because maple syrup is perfect just the way it is. Naturally sweet, it also contains trace vitamins and minerals. A study released this week even [...]

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