Lifestyle

As holiday talk builds to a festive pitch, and the cold darkness moves to embrace you, don’t sleep on pomegranate season. It’s on.

Detroit’s D-Town Farm is a food oasis. Its seven acres produce not only food but a pathway to make the surrounding desert bloom. The farm’s parent organization, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, has been making change happen since 2006, helping to put thousands of Detroit residents to work in their own neighborhoods, turning vacant lots into gardens, while lobbying the city to allow, if not encourage, urban agriculture.

Today we dive deep into another example of a happy marriage between chile and cheese: the jalapeño popper.

When the wrapper is made out of lettuce, there are no empty calories.

Verde sauce is green. If we are speaking in general terms, that’s about all we can say, because the source of that color varies.

If I could get across one point today, it would be that people should be putting lemons in blenders.

A radish sends mixed messages. It can look like something designed by Willy Wonka but taste like mustard gas. In perhaps the ultimate bait-and-switch of the vegetable world, eating a radish can feel like leaning in for a kiss and getting slapped. Which I’m not saying is a bad thing. The key is to get as much mileage out of that slap as you can.

Where there are chile peppers, there are sauces made from chile. And where there is chile sauce there is a choice between green and red. Red chile are fully ripened and pack a distinct sweetness along with their heat. Green chile are picked before they ripen and have a slightly bitter, pungent and more complex flavor. 

It’s early March, which means most of us are either complaining about the weather or plotting out St. Patrick’s Day plans. Whether that means cozying up at home with a pot of lamb stew and slice of soda bread or heading out to the bars for green Guinness (please don’t), this late winter holiday offers a slight respite from the stir-crazy nature of the month.

I’m no fan of hominy, but I’d crawl across broken glass for a sip of posole. Both words refer to the same ingredient, but the difference between the two is like the difference between a violin and a fiddle — it boils down to what you do with it.

Of all the things to feel bad for vegetarians over, bone broth is up there with bacon. Making a proper broth without assistance from the animal kingdom is nearly impossible.

Wild rice isn’t actually rice, but the kernel of a large aquatic grass native to the lake country of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, extending into Canada. Like the people of that northern landscape, it’s rugged and earthy, with more character than its soft, domesticated counterpart. Wild rice has a nutty tea-like flavor, and a texture that pushes back when you chew.