Grow Your Own – Food, That Is

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!

Daniel Pauly: The Ocean’s Shifting Baseline

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?

Puget Sound Shellfish at Risk

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.

Growing Your Own – Time to Get Gardening!

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?

Pandora’s Lunchbox by Melanie Warner

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.

Spring Floods – The Farmer’s Dilemma

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.

Comfort Food: Tomato Dill Soup

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.