Earth is leaning away from our star as though playing a bit coy, backing off as though it just needs a little space before it can draw back in again. This loss of intimacy with the sun leaves us chilled and lacking light, feeling a tad solitary; in the northern hemisphere, it's winter. Of course, just as our days are shortest, Christmas comes to offer a celebratory reprieve. Regardless of whether the holidays induce true jolliness and wonder or something closer to frazzlement

"By this action, what am I saying 'yes' to?" -Charles Eisenstein, The Yoga of Eating Deep into last winter I had my doubts we'd ever feel the warmth of July again. Yet here we are, well into summer, the season of abundance, the earth putting forth food in full force. And with all that production comes opportunity. Opportunity not only to seize fresh, nutrient-dense, full-flavoured produce, but to connect more deeply with place and shape the world we live in. Because eating is

Those of you in milder climes may find it hard to believe, but here in our Cochrane yard, approaching the end of April, just about the only things I can find poking through the newly-thawed ground are chives and perennial onions. It has been One. Long. Winter. But let's work with what we've got, right? Hungry for a sprig of anything fresh and alive from soil that has been asleep for so long, I'm ready, scissors in hand, to reap a wee harvest from those tiny allium tufts. And

With summer well and truly behind us and fall swiftly morphing into winter, it's a good time to don a thick sweater and take stock of what we reaped this past season. The freezer is full of pestos (spruce tip, nettle, basil, arugula, etc.), raspberries, saskatoons, applesauce, and rosehip syrup. There's a sack of colourful potatoes keeping cool, cabbage fermented into sauerkraut and kimchi, and some extra root veggies (carrot, beet, burdock, and celeriac) in the crisper. Ther

Spring has finally arrived in Alberta and, along with birdsong and bicycles, this means a whole lot of green. Green - a favourite colour of humans! In the landscape it suggests abundance and moisture; in nutrition, green leaves are the most nutrient-dense of all vegetables, packed with heaps of vitamins and minerals including the ever-needed magnesium, heart of the chlorophyll molecule. Wild plants tend to have much higher levels of phytonutrients (those multitudinous, but le

“Cooking gives you a chance to practice the esoteric art of manifestation - bringing something from the imagination into physical reality.” -Andrew Weil There's a dichotomy in how our culture views the act of preparing food. It's either looked upon as the realm of domestic drudgery, historically the sad lot of the paid domestic worker or unliberated "housewife", or we exalt it as the domain of high-end visionary chefs. But is cooking not a daily act of creativity available