Tammy Donroe

Turning over your recycling to your town every week is great and everything, but think before you fling your more useful trash into the recycle bin.  Recycling still swallows resources and some materials may have plenty of remaining life before they progress on their spiritual path toward reincarnation.  Here are some ideas for getting extra mileage out of your food packaging through creative repurposing.  Read more >

I adore mushrooms.  I love everything about them: the way they smell, the way they taste, the way they look.  Well, I suppose none of that brackety shelf fungi will be winning any beauty contests, and the same goes for huitlacoche (corn fungus that looks disGUSting), but chanterelles are pretty cute.  I love that mushrooms convert decay into something more palatable.  Nature can be so brutal and yet so simultaneously awesome.  Unfortunately, I have a little mushroom digestion problem that prevents me from going too far overboard, but trust me when I say I love them more than you do.  Just don’t make me prove it.  Read more >

Contributing Editor Alanna has already started us down the path of the artichoke this spring, but this thistly edible could use some extra press.  One post to plant the seed, another to coax you on, and maybe a few more before you’re convinced to actually cook them if you’re new to their preparation.  After all, they’re intimidating with their thorny leaves and foreboding, though easily subdued, choke.  But they’re also delicious and, once you learn how to handle them, fun to eat.  Read more >

I used to think I was an excellent parent because my kids would eat turnips.  Then they stopped eating turnips and a whole bunch of other vegetables, and I had to wipe that smug expression off my face.  I guess it wasn’t so much that they had liked the turnips as they hadn’t formed an opinion about them, yet.  And when they finally did, forget it.  Many years and many vegetables later, it’s been like a never-ending game of Sorry.  We take 7 steps forward, 4 steps back, and just when you think you’re in the safety zone, you get bumped back to Start.    Read more >

It’s almost Spring.  Yay!!!  We’re on the cusp of it, which means, at least for me, a blissful sort of anticipation and yet an utter confusion about what to cook.  It’s still technically winter but I’m sick to death of root vegetables.  Still, it seems like artichokes and asparagus might be jumping the gun a little, at least where I live.  So, we’re mixing and matching this month, as I patch together a seasonal meal from what the blogs have been serving up: a little winter, a little spring, but lots of flavor.  Read more >