Food Shorts (29)
Open Air Dining
by Carol Koleman
Two-fer-one in the summer: Great food, great outdoors.
Is spring really longer than it used to be, and the summers hotter? Feels so to us. But soon enough the rains will stop and we’ll be heading for a pleasant patio with great food. Whether you want a getaway or a sense of homecoming, the Salt Lake City area offers options for your summertime outdoor dining pleasure.
All establishments listed here have patios. Many serve brunch on weekends. Some stay open late at night (often till midnight on weekends).
Enjoy some of our favorite eateries and have a great summer!
Springtime Gardening
by Kay Denton
Managing the unpredictable ways of Utah spring weather.
It’s another typical spring in Utah—sunshine one day, bluster the next—and gardeners are pondering the typical spring questions: Plant now or wait? Follow the seed packet information or the weather advisories? Start from seeds or buy plants?
Size Matters
by Fred Montague
A 3 ft. by 6 ft. raised bed gardening system beats a 4x8 on several counts—learn why, and how to build one.
Over the years, my wife, Pat, and I have tried several gardening methods in a number of locations. We continually refine our approach as we learn from friends and neighbors, from books and from the garden itself. Plants aren’t the only things that grow.
We’ve grown large sprawling gardens with long, straight rows in the fertile floodplain of a midwestern creek. We’ve planted in patches in woodland clearings and among the scrub oak, sagebrush and boulders in the Rocky Mountain highlands (at an elevation of 6,500 feet). We’ve gardened on university campuses and at elementary schools in urban areas. We’ve grown garden plants on apartment windowsills and balconies in containers and in cold frames and greenhouses. If we were to begin a garden (in any temperate climate location) to grow food for a small family and we had a small garden area (say 15 ft. x15 ft.), I would use 3 ft. x 6 ft. raised beds.
Gardening from the Ground Up
by Kay Denton
Healthy plants come from well-fed soil. Everything you need to know to make sure your dirt can grow your greens.
Let’s dish dirt, shall we? I mean the real thing. The stuff that shows up as muddy paw prints on your newly washed kitchen floor or, if you’re in a life well-lived as a gardener, under your finger nails. Soil is truly a work of natural artistry and fine cooking: Start with a large portion of rocks broken down through climate changes, chemical weathering and leaching, vegetation, living organisms and movement; mix in the leftovers of those previously living beings—both plant and animal—and add water and air. Allow to break down and recombine. The result is topsoil, good for growing a wide array of plants and trees, and offering a cozy home for worms, insects and thousands of microorganisms.
2011 Planting Guide
Sponsored by Western Garden Centers
Learn when to plant what with this clip-and-keep chart.
√ plan
√ start seeds
√ interplant
√ companion-plant
√ water
√ thin
√ weed
√ trellis
√ add compost
√ mulch
√ prune
√ harvest
√ admire
√ turn compost pile
√ keep a garden journal
√ succession-plant
√ have a garden party
To Bee or Not to Bee
by Andy Monaco
Confessions of a novice bee keeper.
I don’t know when the thought of keeping bees occurred to me. It could have been weeks or months or years before April 23, 2010, the day I picked up my hive. I drove to Jones Bee Company, located on the edge of Salt Lake civilization and claimed my pre-ordered box of bees. I paid for them, asked a few questions and loaded them in my truck. Home 20 minutes later, I was hit with the realization that I had just become a “beek,” a neighborhood beekeeper. A bee geek. I asked myself, “What was I thinking?” All I really knew about bees is that they are four-winged armed terrorists unconcerned about giving their lives to support the cause.
Kombucha Disappears from Grocery Shelves
Time to start brewing it yourself!
by Heidi Novak
U Can Garden
by Benjamin Bombard
The UofU's organic garden aims to become a communtity concern.
It’s a few days after July 4, and Alexandra Parvaz, Jimmy Ruff, and a couple volunteers are harvesting veggies from their garden at the University of Utah. “The garlic harvest usually takes place on Independence Day, to declare independence from the supermarket,” Parvaz tells me. She pulls off her dirty gloves, tilts up the edge of her wide-brimmed gardener’s hat, and stands there looking at a bountiful pile of fresh-picked garlic laid out on a tarp, heads of the stuff as big as fists, with emerald stalks as long as a grown man’s arm. In this instance, gardeners aren’t simply declaring their own comestible liberty, they’re helping a whole university begin to assert its foodstuff self-sufficiency. And their efforts, combined with those of other institutional bodies, are making the local foods movement a reality at the University of Utah.
Forget Far-Flung Food
by Tara Poelzing
The Eat Local Challenge dares you to chow down close to home.
Science has shown that food loses nutrients over time (and it takes time to ship food from far away); economists have shown that supporting local businesses strengthens the local economy; and our taste buds prove to us time and time again that fresh food just tastes better. Eating locally provides an opportunity to vote with our food dollars and eating habits. By taking the steps to eat locally, we can show our support for local farmers and businesses, and consume less oil as distance between farm and food is greatly reduced. We strengthen our community as individuals come together to share resources, and customers come face to face with growers, ranchers and local shopkeepers.
Agent for Change: Joan Gussow
by Heidi Novak
Perceived cornucopia: Locavore pioneer Joan Gussow says it's time to get real with our relationship with food.
Joan Dye Gussow is a tenacious activist for all things unpro-cessed. Her crone wisdom and cockeyed optimism are inspiring. A nutrition educator by trade (she has actively educated her students and the public about nutritional ecology and sustainability for over 35 years), she is also a gardener, cook and writer. Her memoir "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader" is filled with recipes of truth and hope (and real food recipes, too). She walks the talk of a person commited to helping build locally based and self-reliant food economies.
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