In the wake of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, the media has trumpeted the predictable calls for tighter gun controls and widespread speculation about the shooter's mental health. But those calling for change have done remarkably little soul-searching...

Living in Washington, D.C., I enjoyed dropping by the Dupont Circle Farmers' Market every Sunday. The market has a robust feel to it -- a sense of fullness, bounty and dynamism.

The producers proudly display their wares under...

Bill Stinson, proprietor of the idyllic Peace Valley Farm in Williamstown, Mass., will be the first to tell you that his life has not been one of glamor. He encountered every type of difficulty imaginable as he plucked an agricultural...

In 2002, two neighbors armed with spades and seeds changed everything for crime-addled Quesada Avenue in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point area. The street had been ground zero for the area's drug trade and its attendant violence. But when Annette Smith...

Bruce Dunlop was an engineer before he became a farmer on a picturesque island off the coast of Washington in 2002. This technical background turned out to serve him well in producing pork and lamb to sell from Lopez Island...

It isn't always easy finding fresh, high-quality food in this country. Supermarkets, with their long, complex supply chains, usually offer unripe or subpar produce that leaves a lot to be desired. But the usual alternative methods of provision have distinct limitations. Luckily, technology provides one great answer to this dilemma,...

In what might be called the "war and peace corner" of the National Mall -- neighbor to the State Department, the Vietnam and Korean War Veterans Memorials, the World War II Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial -- the new headquarters...

Food writer Mark Bittman doesn't see himself as part of a vanguard in publishing, even though his newest work, Cooking Solves Everything, will be reserved for e-readers and iPads only.

"I thought I'd see what happens," he told me over the phone, a shrug in...

Across much of the developing world,
one out of every three girls is married before they turn 18. Yet they are, according to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, still children.

This...

My favorite place in D.C. is an oasis of contemplative calm smack in the center of the city's most chaotic tourist hotspot. As visitors flurry along the Mall, checking Smithsonian sites off their lists and buying their children snow cones, I...

At 1am on Saturday, January 29, I watched from the balcony of my Cairo apartment as a mob of young men with crude weapons smashed and looted the Radio Shack store next door. The building's guards shot a rifle vainly...

Why hectic times call for a return to the family meal.

When the 10 Garcia-Prats boys got together every night for dinner, they shared more than food around the table. They talked about the successes and frustrations of their days. The older boys helped the younger ones cut their meat....

Chances are you'd like to do volunteer work, but you don't. Maybe you don't have time or don't like commitment. While many Americans intend to volunteer, only about a quarter of us actually do it.

But what if...

DC has many hidden corners, so while the tourists might head for Dean and Deluca, those who have been around the block will find quirkier (not to mention cheaper) places to shop for all kinds of necessary items and delights.

In writing my DC Insider's Guide for...

There are a lot of places to get your drink on in the District, so it's important to pick out those special establishments that serve up some unique atmosphere with your cocktail.

In writing my DC Insider's Guide for the iPhone and iPad, I focused on bars...

In DC, where so many over-serious people run around fluffing their tail feathers and admiring the plumage of their campaign donors, kids can sometimes seem like an alien species that's stumbled into the wrong ecosystem. But all the parents who live here know that life really revolves more around swimming...

I grew up in the DC area, and I suppose that's as good a thing as any to blame for my enormous sweet tooth (a fang, really). What can I say, all that political backstabbing makes you feel like a little sugar every now and then. As an adult I...

There's a lot of discussion these days about food security amid predictions of rampant population growth and anxious memories of 2008 food riots in the developing world. Much of this talk comes in the form of boosterism for high-yielding GMO seeds, but before we launch ourselves...

One way of improving the United States food system has more to do with business practices than it has to do with food.

The now-popular idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) dictates that businesses should take it upon themselves to forgo profits their shareholders demand so they can address social...

The recent debate among food writers on the New York Times op ed page and Grist magazine highlighted a glaring problem, one that concerns not only our food system but also our advocacy for a better one: The middle is going missing, and no...