Anson Mills has brought back many southern grains that were eaten back in the 1700s and 1800s and then went nearly extinct. Taste what really good pure grains should taste like.

Do you love posole but don't love how long it can take to make? If you have an Instant Pot, you can make a big batch in less than an hour (you could even make it during the week), and you'll be swooning over the flavors for days. The keys? Good pork shoulder, and good chicken broth.

The flavor of ‘dry-aged’ beef was the norm until widespread refrigeration and the shift from rail-transport of whole carcasses to the boxed-beef revolution. This was fueled by the advent of the interstate system, cheap gas, and ubiquitous trucking which supplanted all previous methods of transport and distribution.

Niman Ranch pork is different; it truly is something else. I’ve cooked with it now several times, from shoulder to belly to loin. It’s not only that Niman Ranch pork has true pork flavor, it’s that that flavor is so richly deep that it shocks.

This past weekend I was fortunate to be presented with an opportunity to visit a hog farm in Iowa that uses the Niman Ranch methods I also got to attend the yearly Hog Farmer Awards dinner and ceremony. I was eager to see the practices being put into play and, quite honestly, to see if the hype was real or if it’s all just a great story.

Soda bread is love and life in my family. This humble peasant bread, accompanied by a  pot of tea and meant to sustain farmers through the final hours of their daily toil was omnipresent throughout my life.

It’s not the “peaches” in Palisade peaches that taste so good; it’s the “Palisade.” These peaches are awesome because they come from this place on the planet.

In order to "get" local, it may pay to look far and wide. The Slow Food movement — begun in Italy in the 1980s by a group of food activists — really has changed how we see the idea of eating “local.”

By Bill St. John

On the Fourth of July, Independence Day, our national birthday, all of us once, not so long ago, watched a parade, saluted the flag, oohed-and-ahhed at works on fire in the sky. But all of us don’t do all of that altogether anymore. Yet one thing that we used all to do, we still do, every one of us (for the great majority).

We eat.