Eat Close To Home

Fake Victory?

I’ve been reading Kitchen gardening in America : a history / by David M. Tucker. It’s a really fascinating overview of who grew personal vegetable gardens, what they grew, the techniques they used, and their philosophical outlook on gardening from colonial times through about 1980. After the cut, I shall ramble on endlessly about three main points:

• How “Three Sisters” gardens were actually planted
• The fact that from 1941-1943, personal vegetable plots were labeled “UNPATRIOTIC” by the US Government (yeah, this one made me stand on my head…)
• Why I found this book much more inspiring than Patricia Klindienst’s The Earth Knows My Name

Read the rest of this entry »

In the next week or so, there will be postings about…

• Several tasty meals I’ve made recently
• Vegetarian Menu for A(nother) Month
• Pictures of the ginger growing in my living room!

Anyone interested in the veg menu/recipes: how important is the “shopping list” part to you?

Initial reports from my folks in Sugar Land, Texas, is that they have weathered Ike pretty well. Little or no damage or flooding in their area, which is fairly well inland (a SW suburb of Houston). And the aunt, uncle, and cousin who originally refused to evacuate DID evacuate, and are safe with my in-laws.

Thanks for all the good thoughts. Let’s hope Galveston wasn’t destroyed.

On Saturday, September 13th, I’ll be blogging LIVE from Ann Arbor’s Homegrown Festival under the auspices of my new paid gig at Eat Local Eat Natural. I’ll be interviewing chefs, sampling heirloom tomatoes, and taking oodles of pictures.

Stop by and sign the “I like it local and natural” poster at the big refrigerated truck! That’ll be my base of operations. And after the festival, you can read my posts over at http://blog.eatlocaleatnatural.com/ .

The results are in! Twenty-five people responded to the survey about why they read and write food blogs. Highlights:

• About half of the respondents read blogs; about half read and write them.
• Half the respondents live in SE Michigan, and they read blogs from people all over.
• 15 out of 25 people say they read blogs to get new ideas, information, recipes, etc.
• Half the people who write blogs cite “Sharing” as the reason they blog.

Full results in PDF format

I’m curious to know about the availability of healthy foods to my readers. I have a short (6-question) survey – care to enlighten me? I’ll share the results in a week or so.

Take the survey!