Civil Eats

The Lemon Lady needs a new nickname, methinks.

Anna Chan, 37, has outgrown the title, which doesn’t begin to describe the difference this anti-hunger activist has made in less than a year in her one-woman campaign to get fresh produce into the mouths of people in need in her community. Read More

Thumb through the opening pages of Kauai’s phone book and you’ll find local maps that denote something you won’t find in most places – a tsunami line. The barely perceptible demarcation that runs just inside the coastline of Hawaii’s western most major island is a subtle warning of the always present threat of natural disaster. Perhaps more poignantly, it is also a reminder of how perilous life has and could become for the 63,000 year-round residents of this otherwise paradisiacal isle. Read More

Chef Calvin Blake holds the huge, deep green, red-veined leaves up to his nose and breathes in their pungent, sassy aroma. “That smells so good—so fresh!” he exclaims, adding the bags of Giant Red Mustard leaves to his cart. “These are going to be great in salads.” Read More

Rio Thomas is leading a small squad of volunteers through the damp, early morning fields of Alm Hill Farm at the outskirts of Bellingham, Washington. Their voices hushed by the gray sky overhead and limbs still stiff from sleep, this silent band treads carefully across rows of lettuce and strawberry beds before reaching their target – precisely lined-out rows of snap and snow peas with pods dangling loose and sassy like earrings from a gypsy’s ears. Thomas issues instructions to pick only the ripe pods, leave the young ones, and fill their harvest buckets at will. Read More