Category: Food

Replacing the Car: Groceries

My mother would do the shopping once a week, filling her cart and car with groceries. We would dutifully unload and put away all the food we may or may not eat over the next week, as this was just how things were done. As an adult, I kept the same practices. Of course I […]

A Poem for August 27th, 2020

Weep and know Death, Land of Sky Blue Waters. There will be no butter blocks carved of your daughters. Eighteen hundred siblings are already dead. All else holds its breath so The Thing won’t spread. The places you ate, the places you drank, The places you danced and flirted, The places you studied, and the […]

Streets Aldi Grocery

Shopping for Food, and Community, at Aldi

A grocery store arose at the corner of Penn and Lowry in the middle of a federally designated food desert some years ago, but it was no mirage. With healthy foods, organic produce and household items, Aldi is my oasis. The costs stay low through small measures: no fancy displays, no free bags, no piped-in […]

Peach tree with wildflowers

Food and Permanence

Since buying a house in 2017, I’ve been planting trees. As of today, I have added 12 trees and about 37 woody shrubs, many of which are fruit- or nut-bearing. In a few years, these should provide a cornucopia of fresh food for both us and the wildlife. Right now, though, they produce almost nothing. […]

Streets Weeds

Fun Weeds You Can Eat

The natural world is a complicated place, and to eat a weed that you’ve passed by day after day is to gain a glimpse into those depths. Plus, it’s the easiest meal you will ever gather.

dozens of chestnuts, about the size of the shown quarter

The City That Eats Together: A Climate Committee Tree Planting Event

Editor’s note: Julia wrote this piece prior to the killing of George Floyd and subsequent unrest. The last few days have again revealed the structural inequality that persists in our cities. These gaps come in many forms, including in access to food. As grocery stories have been destroyed or shuttered throughout many parts of the […]

Co2 Emissions April 2020

National Links: Making the City an Open Air Restaurant

Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list.  At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region. […]