If you’re like me, shopping has become a drag. In my efforts to be responsible, green, humane, and healthy, grocery shopping has turned into bootcamp. Instead of strolling in and picking up something that sounds yummy for dinner, I often feel morally and intellectually challenged to make my selections. The grocery aisles have become a giant food-centric IQ test.
Last Sunday I was lucky enough to be included in one of the intimate farmhouse dinners at Kurtwood Farms on Vashon. Ex-Seattle chef Kurt Timmermeister (and friends) produce regular Sunday night dinners on his 13-acre dairy farm that are the acme of local eating. Every bite of food — with the exception of 4 or 5 [...]
Slow Food, a non-profit founded in Italy in 1989, was the first organization to point out the link between what’s good for the planet and what’s great on the plate (leave it to an Italian). Their purpose is to “counteract fast food and fast life, as well as the disappearance of local food traditions, people’s [...]
It can be challenging when you begin to look at putting your conscious eating ideals into action. Organic almost always costs more; local can be hard, if not impossible, to find and humanely raised meat may only be available to you via the Internet. At the very least, eating mindfully will introduce constraints to the [...]
Since moving to Seattle from season-free Southern California, I have had to adjust to postponed pleasures. Learn to wait. There are big, long stretches of time with little sun, weeks without a dry patch of sky, lots of cold days and plants asleep under ground.
Then, just when you think you can’t stand it anymore, things [...]
