If the complicated world of wine, with its weirdly-named varietals and strange descriptions — like, how can wine be dry? or have a nose? — has ever mystified you, consider the photo at left. That’s what I saw the first time I ventured into the building where the wine is made at Bluemont Vineyard. A…
The bean salad we enjoyed at Meredith’s going away party came from a book called Plant Pure Nation, which is the practical companion to a film detailing what happened to people in small-town North Carolina who stopped eating animals for a couple of weeks — their diseases of affluence disappeared. It’s a subversive documentary which…
Does it matter if I say my kale is healthy? Or my broccoli? Or my shot of wheatgrass juice? Michael Ruhlman thinks it does. “No food is healthy,” Ruhlman reminds us. “Not even kale.” In an article in Sunday’s Washington Post, Ruhlman asserts that one reason most of us eat poorly is that we think…
Seems like a cosmic lesson: I’ve just fallen in love with eating food right out of the ground — that broccoli! those beets! — and now there isn’t anymore? Seasonalism is a great adventure in nourishment and discovery, moving from the May rows of the garden through the November rows like a progressive dinner party…
Kia Ora, as we say in Maori — meaning ‘Be well and healthy.’ We being me and the New Zealanders I’ll be meeting soon. Some of you may recognize my name from school tours, CSA emails, or visits to the market. I have been a part of Great Country farms since 2013, when I began…
On Tuesday, Janell, Bruce, Nick, Wes and I gathered in the tap room to generate label content for the two beers we’ll be bottling soon. We sniffed and sipped and savored and threw out all the words we could think of. Here’s the result of that brainstorm: Work Session IPA We call it “Work,” but…
The simplest way to answer that question is to put one in your mouth, like the guy in the photo to the left just did. The answer is the red stuff running down his chin. Maybe part of the reason we love them is that we can get that red stuff only for a few…
My dogs don’t follow instructions. They’re smart guys who understand English pretty well, but they generally do what pleases them, not what pleases me. When I tell them to get off the bed, for example, they do this: Meghann Weller-Redmer, owner of Sit Stay Dog Training, says there’s a simple reason for that: I praise…
When I visited Leesburg Chiropractic last week, Dr. Sampson gave me company pen that looked like it had been slammed in a drawer. Between the words “Leesburg” and “Chiropractic”, the pen bent sharply, and though it kind of straightened out again after the last ‘c’, you couldn’t make the cap stay on at either end…
I ate my kale with pinto beans and quinoa — not a fancy dish, but cheap and nourishing. First I braised the kale with some onion, and since heat softens the flavor of kale, sauteed onion controlled the flavor of the dish. That was all right. I had eaten a lot of the kale raw…
It was feeding time when I arrived at Spring House Farm for a visit, so I put on a pair of muck boots and followed Andrew Crush to the breakfast trough. “Careful of that,” Andrew said, stepping over the electrified wire that encloses the woods where his Mule Foot, Large Black, and Ossabaw pigs live.…
The old adage that every cloud has a silver lining ranks pretty high on the list of Things That People Say About The World. We know it isn’t true — some bad things are just bad — but we say it any way because it makes the world seem easier to live in. And because…
I used to be an athlete. When I was 17, I could swim 100 yards of freestyle in 47 seconds, and no one has ever swum 100 yards of butterfly at the West Side Swim Club in Madison Wisconsin as fast as I did one day in 1976. But the exercise I do these days…
It’s supposed to be good for you to a degree that makes you wonder whether it’s too good to be true. Some of the claims are hard to believe: “Wheatgrass juice fights body odor! Wheatgrass juice blocks tooth decay! Wheatgrass keeps gnats out of your eyes!” And relieves arthritis, and reduces inflammation, and protects against certain cancers.…
When I moved to Western Loudoun 14 years ago, you couldn’t buy a stitch of clothing anywhere this side of the outlet mall in Leesburg. Not so much as a tee shirt or a pair of socks. And if you wanted rain gear, or a headlamp, or a water bottle, or any piece of equipment…
Barn Talk 