Anne Ford — who is, by the way, a great example of a writer-as-polymath and whose work I always enjoy for its thorough, open-minded take on whatever it is that has captured her attention — has a nice piece in this week’s Reader on my friend Nance Klehm. This passage handily sums up why I … Continued
Fact One: The first edition of The Nomenclature of the Apple, published by USDA pomologist W.H. Ragan in 1905, lists 6,554 uniquely named apple varieties then grown in the United States. One hundred years later Wisconsin orchard-keeper Dan Bussey, whose exhaustive history of American apples is due out in 2010, estimates the true number at … Continued
How I Learned to Love Goat Meat (NYT)
Would Red Delicious have taken over the world if it was still called the Hawkeye? A nice little piece from Edible Grande Traverse (who knew?) on the evolution of the apple that now dominates the American apple market.
This one, courtesy of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State, shows the number of crops and livestock produced for sale on one percent of Iowa farms between the years 1920 (far left column) and 2002 (far right). Kurt Meine passed it around the other night as part of his apple talk. For … Continued
Karen Lehman and the Illinois Fresh Taste Initiative have launched a blog, the practically titled Good Food for All. In their own words (because I have to get back to work): “Good Food for All is a resource space for all those in the Greater Chicago Foodshed and beyond wishing to learn and engage with others in … Continued
My former colleague and sometime dining companion Mike Sula is a finalist for a James Beard award, for the Whole Hog Project — a yearlong chronicle of the care, feeding, and, yes, eating of a mulefoot pig. The multimedia project was a collaborative effort, with culminating in a terrific two-part video by Sky Full of … Continued
I left the UW-Madison arboretum last night with a head so full of apple facts and figures that it’ll take a few days here to sort it all out. I now know how to do a graft and why you might want to seal it with paraffin; the difference between native crab apples and imports; … Continued
The Obamas are planting a vegetable garden. Standing by for press conference at which Alice Waters takes all credit. 🙂 UPDATE: The NYT has more. Of course this is shaping up to be Sam Kass‘s baby.
I’m heading to Madison this weekend to learn everything there is to know about heirloom apple preservation. Or at least that’s what it seems like. The occasion is a loose collection of apple-related activities put together under the auspices of RAFT, a Slow Food USA program/cabal of heirloom food freaks. The acronym stands for Restoring America’s Food … Continued