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Radish Candy

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By Heidi Lewis Here’s a great idea for a new product—radish-flavored chewing gum! Some reasons why radish-flavored gum would be great: Radishes have great refreshing taste. They have a palate-cleansing effect, leaving you with a sparkly smile. Radishes and their juice are a digestive aid. Radishes have a variety of shapes and sizes and come [...]

Winter’s Plenty

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By Heidi Lewis The bounty of winter squash includes a fabulous array of colors, textures, and shapes. Just like the American population, they have an international palette of names, such as delicata, turban, Hubbard, Hokkaido, carnival, and butternut. Named for outstanding characteristics or in homage—for example, the turban squash mimics the shape of the familiar [...]

The Root Rainbow

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By Heidi Lewis An old children’s classic, The Story of the Root-Children, tells of how, in spring, Mother Earth awakens the sleepy little root babies that live underground and sets them to sew new clothes and clean and paint the beetles and bugs. They emerge from their underground home dressed in new rainbow capes and [...]

Microgreens in Macro Land

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By Heidi Lewis I can’t move. The last thing I remember was sipping tea and munching on a health-nut bar. Now I appear to be lying on the floor, immobile. I can just turn my head and—what? I’m covered in a web of threads staked into the ground. “You’re under arrest!” cries a tiny voice. [...]

Shaman Shiitake

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By Heidi Lewis Shiitake, Maitake, and Reishi are the venerable mushroom triumvirate in alternative medicine. They are the most famous shaman healers of the mushroom kingdom. For classification purposes, living organisms are divided into five Kingdoms: Animal, Plant, Protista, Monera—and Fungi. These three mushrooms have undergone much scientific scrutiny and due diligence about their health benefits. They are full of [...]

Squirreling Away in an Acorn Economy

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By Heidi Lewis Have you noticed how the mighty oaks rain down their crops of shiny acorns on us in fits of boom or bust? Some years they pelt us with their bounty, making it feel like we’re walking on marbles and that hard hats are a requirement—and other years, nothing. The rhyme or reason [...]

Rutabaga Queens

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By Heidi Lewis Many great innovations have come from the redwoods of Humboldt County, CA—kinetic sculpture racing is but one. The first race materialized in 1969 when local sculptor Hobart Brown challenged fellow artist Jack Mays to a race down Ferndale’s Mainstreet against his “Pentacycle.” Years of creativity, engineering, and good times have ensued, and [...]

Souplandia

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Dear Diary, I am soooo psyched to be going home for the holidays. We’re about to land, so the flight attendant has asked us to fasten our seatbelts and put our tray tables up. The pilot is flying low so we can get a good look at Souplandia. Practically every home in Souplandia has a [...]

Baby, It’s Dark Outside

Warm winter sun

By Heidi Lewis It sure is dark here in winter. But consider how dark it is in the rest of the universe. The universe is estimated to be 95% dark energy and dark matter; only 5% is ordinary matter, things like: us, planets, suns, asteroids, space stations, and galactic gas. NASA posits dark energy as [...]

Mighty Green Bags

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By Heidi Lewis “Here I come to save the day!” Mighty Mouse’s musical manifesto heralded this tiny superhero’s arrival to save and protect us. But since Mr. Mouse is no longer in syndication, it looks like we’re gonna have to do the saving ourselves. The crush of serious news about pollution and global warming that comes into our homes [...]