Agriculture Sector

Texas Peaches Had a Rough Spring, So If You See a Good One: Eat It

Ken Halverson from Larken Farms Orchard brought a few boxes of the season's first peaches to the White Rock Local Market over the weekend. They were small, tart and firm, but they were peaches. And they're only going to get better as the summer progresses. Halverson says the spring weather has been ... More >>

Is There A Prison Monkey Rodeo?

Dallas Fed Looks Back on the Year in Drought, Beef and Black Gold

In '12, a parched Texas saw drought ease, but the cattle industry continues to reel from the hangover brought on by 2011, the driest year in its history. Meanwhile, oil! Dear Lord, he sent us another boom. The Dallas Fed describes what 2012 held for these iconic Lone Star pursuits. We're a farming ... More >>

Modern Prematurity

Seth Rogen takes his Centrum Silver in The Guilt Trip.

As Nationwide Drought Sears Hay Crops, North Texas' Ranch Hand Rescue Struggles

When a farm animal comes to Bob Williams, it is dying of extreme neglect or violent abuse. Slowly, and through the beneficence of local veterinarians, foster families who offer up their pastures and the intensive care of Williams and his staff at Ranch Hand Rescue in Argyle, horses and llamas, goats ... More >>

USDA Promotes Meatless Monday Before It Doesn't

See also, from Unfair Park: *Meatless Mondays at USDA Out-and-Out "Treason," Ag Commish Staples Says An internal USDA Newsletter has some Republican tweeps in an uproar. On July 23, the USDA posted a five-page newsletter for employees, offering tips and status updates on "greening efforts" includin ... More >>

Chef Brian Luscher of The Grape on the Kansas Beef Council's Bus Tour

Recently Sara Blakenship reported that chef Brian Luscher was embarking on summer camp tryst with the Kansas Beef Council. As proprietor and chef of The Grape on Greenville Avenue, undisputed burger master and barbecue pro, what better person to represent Texas out on the ranch? So, with permissio ... More >>

How Will Texas' Cattle Crisis and Rising Beef Prices Test Dallas' Love for Steak?

This January, the Houston Press ran a prophetic story about last summer's drought and its coming effects on beef prices. Katherine Shilcutt's story, like our own Brantley Hargrove's story did a few months before, described Texas ranchers who sold off their cattle when the costs associated with raisi ... More >>

Mmm, Science: Lab-Grown Burgers Aren't Far Off, But will Anyone Eat Them?

Meatless Monday, oddly enough, has me thinking about meat more than ever. Apparently I'm not the only one. The New York Times recently held an essay contest for readers. The subject: "Is it ethical to eat meat?" A loaded question, no doubt, and one bound to inspire passionate responses from just ... More >>

Great Texas Drought of 2011 Was the Costliest Ever

It was clear when A&M's livestock economist said the drought had an agricultural toll of $5.2 billion back in August -- which didn't even really mark the nadir of the heatwave -- that we hadn't seen the worst this drought could do. Now we know: $7.62 billion in agricultural losses ... in a single y ... More >>

Franconia Taps Distributor to Help its March Toward Craft-Brew World Domination

​Dennis Wehrmann, brewmaster at McKinney's 2011 Best of Dallas®-winning Franconia Brewing Company, hasn't given up on bottling. His targeted late-summer or early-fall starting time passed, but bottling is still in the works for the company, he says. And with the decision to hand distribution ... More >>

What Happens to the World's Unused Pumpkins?

Dallas Arboretum​Sunday evening, just hours until Halloween, there were still hundreds of un-sold pumpkins at a local farmers market. It raised the question -- what happens to all the left-behind gourds? Do the extras go to the pie factory? Or are they all just tossed in the dump? Turns out ... More >>

A Spoonful Of Honey May Not Keep Your Allergies Down, But It's Tasty Enough To Try

​I've been eying the weather channel a lot lately. Not for the temperature, but for the pollen count, which apparently will begin an upward march as soon as the mercury begins to wane and the fall allergy season kicks off. Allergies aren't good for food critics, as you might have heard. I've ... More >>

A Second (But Still Shitty) Life for Bluefin Tuna, the 600-Pound Chicken of the Sea

FlickrBluefin: It's what's for dinner, presuming you have flexible food morals.​Wednesday is Arts and Life and Style Day at the nation's newspapers, which, believe it or not, still contain no small amount of interesting food news. Our Wednesday Feed highlights the best of it. Tim Carman at Th ... More >>

Egging the Question

Shop a Century of History

Oyster Appellations Return to the Gulf Coast

More than a century ago, there wasn't any such thing as a "gulf oyster." Oysters were offered under specific place names -- a tradition revived this weekend at the first Foodways Texas symposium in Galveston. Jenny Wang​The program wasn't devoted entirely to oysters: Kelly Yandell, one of a f ... More >>

Jack Frost Jacked with Local Farmers, But Not Too Much

​While most of us may have celebrated those snow days earlier this month, you can bet the local farmers weren't making snow-angels. Because it undoubtedly affected crops, City of Ate set out to discover how badly those February-frosts tinged the local leafage -- specifically the farmers contributi ... More >>

Half-Shell Fans Beware, the Future
For Gulf Oysters is Murky

​A waiter at City Diner and Oyster Bar in Corpus Christi broke the appalling news to my wife, in-laws and me last weekend as we made a trip to the coast: No fresh Texas oysters on the half-shell. Not one. Sorry, he said. Dealer prices a week into the start of Texas' oyster harvest from public leas ... More >>

Scarrots Are Real. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

​Scarrots. Apparently, they're not a joke. I heard of them recently and thought that my friend was just making up some cutesy word for carrots. But, Scarrots really exist. Turns out, "A Bunch of Carrot Farmers" (led by Bolthouse Farms) are trying to trick kids into eating carrots this Hallowee ... More >>

The Key to Good Cheese? You Gotta Love Your Goats. (No. Not That Way.)

Hanna RaskinHow could you not love a face like this?​ When a dish transcends its components, its circumstances and a critic's expectations, it's almost invariably described as "made with love." The treacly sentiment may or may not hold true in the kitchen, but a recent tour of goat dairies in ... More >>

ComeHome

Farm to Market

North Haven Gardens gets fresh with you

Dallas Wants to be a Green City, So Why Not Save Some Trees?

Oyster Species Guide

Flat Broke

We Can't Stop Looking at This 1929 Forest Avenue High School Yearbook

Latin Beat

Damien Rice

Monday, May 7, at the Majestic Theater

The Cows Come Home

Fish Story

The Modern screens an eye-opening Nightmare

Best Florist

Dr Delphinium Designs & Events

Kobe Spam?

The steak house is going Wagyu

Corraled

The USDA backs off its tough new meat-inspection standards. That's a good thing, beef producers say.

Buzz

Java jive

Best hamburger (tie)

Angry Dog & Jake's Old Fashioned Burgers and Beer

Fooling with Mother Nature

Plano-based Frito-Lay finds it's better to be safe than sorry with genetically modified foods

Bay botch

Oysterman Joe Nelson says pollution is slowly killing Galveston Bay. Is anyone listening?

Letters

Letters