Recipes: Out of Your Gourd

The first time I tasted pumpkin curry was 10 years ago, at a place in Portland, Ore., that’s half restaurant, half Laundromat. The pumpkin cubes were perfectly tender and the coconut and yellow curry broth were habit-forming. Ever since, pumpkin curry has been one of my primary food obsessions.

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3 mins read

Cheese of the Month: Puddle Duck Creek

If you’re a fan of Beatrix Potter, then you probably remember Jemima Puddle Duck, a character in many Peter Rabbit stories. If there’s a young reader in your house, this might be the perfect time to introduce this tender morsel of cheese with a pleasing, grassy character.

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1 min read

Put It In Your Pocket: How the garden at Southwest Philly’s Mitten cooperative house became the neighborhood-magnet Pocket Farm

"Kids will knock on our door and ask for collards for their grandmum,” says Emily Wren, one of six members of Mitten, a cooperative house of twentysomething coeds that runs an urban farming venture in Southwest Philadelphia known as Pocket Farm. What began three years ago as a household garden to grow food for Mitten

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2 mins read

Shoots & Ladders: That’s a wrap

October’s waning days and crisp evenings provide welcome relief from the summer’s brutal heat, but it’s a bittersweet reward: The summer’s bounty is already nothing more than a bright delicious memory, and your garden is largely in hibernation. If your recall is anything like mine, though, it’s a great time to document your gardening triumphs

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2 mins read

Book Review: Rat Island

Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World’s Greatest Wildlife Rescueby William StolzenburgBloomsbury (2011), $26
For city dwellers, rats are a nuisance and a health hazard. But for isolated island species, rats are a death sentence, as William Stolzenburg demonstrates in his new book, Rat Island.

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1 min read

Book Review: The Neighborhood Project

The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Timeby David Sloan Wilson Little Brown (2011), $25.99
In David Sloan Wilson’s fifth book, the evolutionary biologist chronicles his attempt to use Darwin’s theory of evolution to improve the quality of life in his town of Binghamton, N.Y. It’s an ambitious goal, especially

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1 min read

Sustainable Communities in Action: Sustainable 19125

Philadelphia, as the old trope goes, is a city of neighborhoods. While each has its own concerns and culture, sustainability is a key for all in establishing and maintaining a neighborhood that nurtures and uplifts those who live there. In our Sustainable Communities in Action series, GRID will highlight organizations that are working to make

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3 mins read

Recycling Challenge: Construction Waste

FACT
Building-related construction and demolition waste totals approximately 170 million tons per year, roughly two-thirds of all non-industrial solid waste generation in the U.S.
PROBLEM
Total annual construction and demolition waste (“C&D waste” in the biz) equates to 3.2 pounds of building-related materials per person in the U.S., per day. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 52

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2 mins read