September is always a month of transition as summer retreats and fall foods finally sprout. Pumpkin spiced foods and beverages, to the chagrin of some, returned earlier than ever and began metastasizing. Starbucks served pumpkin latte in August, the food equivalent of Christmas decorations in October. Not all the news was expected, though. The brutal mentor Chef Gordon Ramsey
Read More →And the word nugget is passé. Midsummer cooled down after a blistering, thunderous early summer. This assuaged fears that the hostile storms of June and July had damaged our summer crops. Tomatoes continue to thrive in Iowa’s black soil as fall foods begin to appear with them at local markets.
Read More →Gov. Bob Ray’s passing was treated with rare respect for his eclectic achievements. From our point of view, he did more than anyone to transform Iowa, and particularly Des Moines, into a more cosmopolitan food center, more than anyone even dreamed before Ray took office in 1969. By sheer force
Read More →The suicide of writer/television star Anthony Bourdain devastated the food world in June. No other journalist has changed the way people think about food, travel and culture, at least not since the death in 2006 of R.W. Apple, the New York Times chief political analyst and food correspondent at large. Bourdain rose from dishwasher to chef
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