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Every year at Easter, ham takes the spotlight. A traditional slow roasted smoked ham with brown sugar glaze was my family’s favorite. Yet what about the “forgotten ham” – the uncured, fresh ham? Pick out a fresh picnic ham (shoulder roast) and you’ve got a delicious alternative for the holidays. 
Across the country, spring can’t come soon enough and the call to garden is getting louder and louder. We had the opportunity to speak to Lisa Taylor, author of Your Farm in the City, and get a little advice for new and beginning gardeners. It’s never too early – or too late – to tuck a few seeds in some soil and get growing! 
The ocean has degraded within our lifetimes, as shown in the decreasing average size of fish. And yet, as Daniel Pauly shows us onstage at Mission Blue, each time the baseline drops, we call it the new “normal.” At what point do we stop readjusting downward? 
By the time the first settlers reached the small spit of land that was ultimately to become part of Seattle Washington in 1850, the Olympia oyster population on the Pacific coast was already beginning to be over harvested. And in the early 1900s, poor water quality in Puget Sound threatened to finish it off. Puget Sound shellfish are at risk again. 
It’s the end of March, thank goodness! We won’t have winter much longer, though right now summer seems like years away… Even in the middle – or late winter – gardeners dream about their gardens as they pore over the dozens of plant and seed catalogs that have arrived in the mail. How else do we get through these last weeks of cold, slush, rain, and grey days? 
If a piece of individually wrapped cheese can retain its shape, color, and texture for years, what does it say about the food we eat and feed to our children? Former “New York Times” business reporter and mother Melanie Warner decided to explore that question when she observed the phenomenon of the indestructible cheese. She began an investigative journey that took her to research labs, university food science departments, and factories around the country. 
Casey Bailey, Clearlake Organic Farm, Fort Benton MT, was our “man on the scene” at this year’s MOSES Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse WI. This is his “diary” of this year’s events. 
Farmers in the Snoqualmie Valley share a common awareness that although they have the potential to supply a great deal of the nearly insatiable demand for local and organic food, the future of farming in the valley is dismal. Why? The answer, in a single word, is flooding. 
We take a close look at a full range of soups – from canned condensed to boxed to frozen to fresh homemade – to determine what exactly is in our soup. Is it as wholesome as we think (hope)? 
This recipe is modified from a soup made by the Ovens of Brittany in a small cafe on a busy business thoroughfare in Madison WI. For nearly five years, I ate this soup at least once a week; it’s still my very favorite tomato soup. |
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