Did you know that Starbucks has a corporate policy of making its used coffee grounds available free as a soil amendment or composting ingredient? For months I’ve been working up to introducing myself to our neighborhood Starbucks and starting regular pickups of grounds for my compost pile. A fellow gardener here in the District of [...]
Tags: coffee·composting
Where did the people of Mexico learn to speak Spanish? The answer is simple enough: the Spanish conquistadors who invaded and subdued Mexico hundreds of years ago. But the question points up the fact that there were people living in what we now call Mexico long before the Europeans arrived. Whether Olmec or Aztec or [...]
Tags: avocado·food appreciation·guacamole·kids·Mexico·molcajete
To hear the economists tell it, times may be getting even worse before they get better. Some people have already been forced to tighten their belts. For others, it’s time to think about tightening belts even further. Still, there’s a silver lining to these austere developments: Less consumption by us humans is better for the [...]
Tags: bulk foods·community gardens·Gardening Blogs·recession·seafood·vegetables·whole grains
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
What's in your turkey? We killed and butchered more than 80 birds on the farm of Mike and Michelle Klein in Prince George's County. Thankfully, Michelle did the gutting. Unfortunately, Mike bought his turkey chicks earlier than usual and they did not stop growing. Our prize for helping was a carcass that weighed nearly 40 pounds. It barely fit in the oven. Here, Mike is subjecting a slaughtered bird to the "magic fingers," a machine with a nubby, rotating barrel that removes most of the feathers. 
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