The Spooning tote (at right –>) is of course the best holiday gift around, and only $15 including shipping! Just click the Buy Now button! I’ll wait…OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I can introduce my second favorite tote, this fantastic Meat Mandala bag from Meatpaper. If you aren’t familiar, Meatpaper is a magazine all about that most charged and divisive foodstuff (what its website calls “the Hillary Clinton of the freezer aisle”). No, not mayo, meat! This tote (designed by Rebecca Macri, whose foodie designs are worth a gander) is a worthy partner to the Spooning tote, and I give all my readers permission to buy one. But, you have to buy me one too.

Photos of Alderspring Ranch by Melanie and Caryl Elzinga

As a lad raised in a coal mining village in northern England, I was addicted to cowboy movies and, later, western novels. In my desire to cowboy up after immigrating to the U.S., I hightailed it out of New York City after high school and eventually hired on at ranches in Colorado, eastern Washington, even as far south as Belize. My last paid gig was skiploading grub to feedlot cattle outside Fort Collins, Co.. This is where I had the realization that cowboy work was really about growing beef, a plot point missing from the Gary Cooper and Hopalong Cassidy movies that got me in the saddle in the first place. Read on… »

This article seeks to posit one or more modest proposals about meat and our future. My business concerns edible insects. I founded Sunrise Land Shrimp [Ed: Now called Small Stock Foods.] in 2001 and started major development in 2005. It appears to be the only company in the U.S. devoted to entomophagy. I’ve fed thousands of people cooked insects and have myself eaten roughly 40 kinds of insect and related critters such as scorpions and centipedes.  Some were spectacularly tasty.  Some were culturally important to one ethnic group or another.  Some were purchased, deep-fried, in Thailand, where such foods are common.  Several kinds were acquired, frozen on wrapped trays, in Asian markets here in Providence: silkworm pupae, ant pupae, and water bugs.  I have hopes of securing a supply of dried Mexican grasshoppers. Read on… »