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You can bring a tomato to market . . .

. . . but you can’t make anyone buy it if it’s cheaper at the Pick n Save. Farmers who bring their stuff to the city, whether Chicago’s Green City Market or Madison’s Dane County Farmers’ Market, are fighting shoppers off with sticks this year. In Door County, not so much. An illuminating letter from … Continued

Six spices

  For an alleged food writer, I’ve done a lousy job of posting any actual, like, food content on the blog. Well. No more. Saturday I sat in on “Indian Cooking in the Heartland,” a class led by Madison-based Neeta Saluja. Author of Six Spices: A Simple Concept of Indian Cooking, Saluja’s on a mission … Continued

Be the weed

Got stuff going on but nothing to show for it at the mo. Also, my hands hurt. So I direct you instead to SMITH magazine, where my friends Sari and Josh have a great little web comic up today, called The Beekeeper. It tucks snugly into the theme of “nature in the city,” around which … Continued

For Sale

This rambly old building has been on the market since I first came up here in 2004, which tells you something about the pace of island real estate. Frank Hartmann, the winter manager of the Washington Hotel, moved to Canada before he could realize his (pipe) dream of turning it into a cross-country ski lodge. … Continued

August

Acres of hay have been zipped up across the island into row upon row of scattered, silent bales. They look like big scratchy aspirin waiting to be plucked up by a giant with one mother of a headache.

Trivia Tuesday

“What islander went to Ellison Bay in his boat and, on the way back, rammed it full throttle into Detroit Island, throwing out every passenger but one–which would have been me?”–X.X. OK, that wasn’t really one of the Trivia Night questions at Fiddler’s Green last night. But it was the best of some late-night improvisations … Continued

“An alien thumb of land on the corn-knuckled fist of the Middle West”

I heard a perhaps (probably) apocryphal story the other day, concerning a National Geographic crew’s trip to the island in the late 1960s. Their mission: a story on Schoolhouse Beach, a natural wonder of pale, burnished limestone rocks and the island’s sole swimming beach. As the story goes, though, the islanders weren’t too keen on … Continued

Slow Food speeds up

So . . . I started hearing about the big Slow Food Nation shindig last year, when Carlo Petrini was in Chicago promoting his book, and I was keeping tabs on it and sorta, kinda thinking about going. But while big blowout events like this–which optimists are predicting to be the Woodstock of the Age … Continued

“Whole Paycheck” no more?

Speaking of endeavors shaking off the tar from the “elitist” brush, Whole Foods is now trying to rebrand itself as an affordable grocery option. Good luck with that–I think they have an even rougher road ahead than Slow Food.