For a common vegetable, the cauliflower is high maintenance. It asks a lot — first, a long growing season that resists direct seeding, so it must be transplanted. Cauliflower does not like it hot; it wants plenty of moisture and nutrition. If the farmer can arrange a splash of boron, so much the better. Each cauliflower wants plenty of room and requires dedicated weed control. Finally, when the crop is a field of deep green hues, anchored so firmly in the rich earth, its broad leaves have been satisfied. Down deep within, the desired “fruit” takes shape: The cauliflower forms. ...
by Marilee Foster
As the Mayo Clinic describes it: “Kratom is a supplement that is sold as an energy booster, mood lifter, pain reliever and remedy for the symptoms of quitting opioids, called withdrawal. But the truth about kratom is not so simple. And there are safety problems linked to its use.” The article continues: “Kratom is an herbal extract that comes from the trees of an evergreen tree called Mitragyna speciosa. The tree grows in Southeast Asia.” However, “some kratom sellers add more of the active ingredient than kratom naturally has. … Depending on the amount of active ingredient in the product ...
by Karl Grossman
When I was in the throes of perimenopause, I couldn’t eat hot soup. Any soup, no matter how delicious, precipitated a hot flash. Sweaty heat would radiate from my neck to my scalp and then head south. It was a sad time for me. One of my favorite food groups is soup. I wrote an essay about those hot flashes back then; lucky for you, it didn’t appear in these pages. I didn’t have this gig yet, so you were spared from reading what happened in and to my body while I was in the throes of perimenopause. I did ...
by Tracy Grathwohl
Shaye Weaver on Sep 18, 2012