By Cheryl Herrick
Farm and food stories tend to be about the confluence of the natural environment, human activity, and aspiration. But it’s not every story that’s also about cross-cultural connections and communication, farmland access, conservation, and food security among resettled refugee farmers. And all of these are part of what’s happening over in Colchester with Janine Ndagijimana’s new greenhouse that she’s using to grow new varieties of African eggplant.
By Hailey Grohman
Chelsea Green Publishing
Chef Evan Mallett owns the renowned Black Trumpet restaurant in Portsmouth, NH. A three-time James Beard nominee for Best Chef Northeast and recently featured on NPR’s Here and Now, Evan’s new cookbook is titled, Black Trumpet: A Chef’s Journey Through Eight New England Seasons.
Evan’s goal is to inspire a new generation of adventurous home cooks and chefs alike to rethink local ingredients and flavors while at the same time rekindling interest in the kind of local food production that existed before the modern commodification of our food system.
Vermont’s Chelsea Green Publishing, which published Evan’s new cookbook, interviewed the New England native about cooking with local ingredients, the evolution of New England cuisine, and the state of the current food system.
By S’ra DeSantis
We talked to Chris Waters, a student in the UVM Farmer Training Program, about his lifelong dream to be a farmer and his plans to apply all he’s learned about sustainable agriculture back home in Colorado.
Where are you from?
I live and play in Fort Collins, Colorado, a town with a very similar vibe to Burlington. We like beer, bikes, and bluegrass.
What is your favorite vegetable?
Definitely asparagus because it’s the first veggie I look forward to in spring and it gets me excited about the upcoming bounty of summer.
Fraudulent food is everywhere. From Parmesan cheese to olive oil to Kobe beef, there is no shortage of fake, unhealthy food being sold at restaurants and grocery stores in the United States.
American consumers recently learned of a scandal of how Parmesan cheese sold in this country is cut with cheaper cheeses and wood pulp. Equally disturbing is the fact that products in the U.S. like fish, beef, sushi, wine, and cheese are all regularly mislabeled, adulterated, or swapped for cheaper, less healthful products.
Vermont author Larry Olmsted, who recently published “Real Food Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating & What You Can Do About It,” highlights food fakery and the deceptive practices behind our most beloved products.
By Nancy Hayden
Roaming the hills and back roads in Vermont at this time of year, you find plenty of apple trees. Most are wild trees, also called seedling trees, spread by wildlife or from dropped apples. Their genetics are a wild card mix of apple DNA. Like people, each seedling tree is unique.
Also in Vermont, next to the remains of old homesteads and stone walls, or tucked within regrown forests, you might find what’s left of a 19th- or early-20th-century orchard full of heirloom varieties that were carefully selected and cultivated but whose names have long been forgotten.
For apple enthusiasts of all kinds, these wild and “lost” heirloom trees are like presents waiting to be opened. Not all of them will be what you hoped for, but occasionally, one will be.
Photo: Flickr
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