Earth Eats

This week on the show, we focus on tools of the trade. Muddy Fork Bakery upgraded their mixer and it turned out to be a game changer. Hot sauce production is made easier with a hand crank food mill. And if you ever accidentally purchase the wrong kind of rice in Tokyo, never fear, they have coin operated kiosks to help you out. 

“Sniff it! If they're smelly, I mean stinky, then it's not persimmon…”This week on Earth Eats Eats Wild, we explore the fruits of fall…and the nuts and even beans!Forager Chef Alan Bergo fancies the Kentucky coffee been in its GREEN state, Liz Barnhart crafts a deep purple elderberry syrup, Keako Liff takes a (ahem) aromatic walk down memory lane with ginkgo nuts, and we talk persimmons with a researcher in folklore and library science. 

 ”Acorns are, I mean, they're everywhere. They are incredibly abundant and they've been a really important food source for humans in essentially every region of the planet that had oak trees–which is almost every temperate zone on the entire globe."But we don't do much of acorn eating anymore as people and in communities in most places.”Graphic Novelist Mel Gilman made an instructional zine about eating acorns, and this week on Earth Eats Eats Wild, they talk with us about this abundant food source, and why comics can be a great medium for learning about foraging.And, we process some acorns of our own into flour for baking projects. 

 “For me it feels like we live in an age where you look on the news and it just feels like everything is going wrong. And so gardening feels like a small way we can have an actual, tangible, positive impact on the world around us. In a world where it's easy to feel like everything is just falling apart, it's a small way to actually see progress.”This week on the show, it's back to school part two. We talk with high school students and educators about what their school gardens mean to them.

“And a man on his way to work hops twice to reach, at last, his fig which he smiles at and calls ‘baby.' ‘c'mere baby,' he says, and blows a kiss to the tree.”This week on the show, in honor of WFIU's 75th anniversary, we revisit favorite stories from the Earth Eats archive. We share two pieces celebrating fig trees, including a poem by Ross Gay. We explore connections between food, fine art and memory with artist Mollie Douthit. Plus, a recipe for making pita bread using spelt flour. 

“I remember in Covid, Sara, she went to the grocery on her way home, on a Friday, to get milk and some other things--basically when Covid was shuttin' everything down–and there was chocolate almond milk. And that was it.I'm a pretty big fan of food independence and food sovereignty and having control over your food system and choice over the food that you want. And seeing it not available because of supply chain issues was part of it. There's gotta be a local option for milk. I just think there needs to be as long as we're consuming milk and it's part of our culture, we need to have a local option.”This week on the show we visit Twin Springs Creamery. We meet some of the people and the cows bringing local milk to Southern Indiana. 

“Speaking directly to Black women and wanting Black women to know that their bodies are not the problem. The way that our bodies are treated and problematized and pathologized, we're often taught that it's our fault, that it's our problem to fix or we just need to love our bodies out of societal oppression.”  This week on the show a conversation with dietitian and author Jessica Wilson about her book, It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's BodiesShe's challenging us to rethink the politics of body positivity by centering the bodies of Black women in our discussions about food, weight, health and wellness. 

“When you begin to zoom out, you realize that in fact palm oil is all around us, and the world, in a strange way, is made of palm oil; and we're all, in a certain way, made of palm oil–in the sense that we use it to reproduce our bodies and to clean our skin and to live the lives that we live in a globalized world.”This week on the show, a conversation with Max Haiven, author of the book Palm Oil:The Grease of Empire. He traces the history of palm oil production globally, examining its damaging effect on the environment, the labor abuses in the industry and the ill-effects of this cheap fat on the health of people who consume it. An exploration of what palm can tell us about our global economy, climate change and who we areas a species.

“Bloomington is known in the science world--if you say Bloomington, people think fruit flies.” This week on our show, we tap into the Earth Eats archive, for one of my very favorite stories. It's about our visit to the kitchen of a science building on the campus of Indiana University, where they prepare food for a tiny organism that supports genetic research around the globe. This one is from 2020, so you'll hear some mention of the global pandemic. This is a strange one–but fascinating.

This week on our show we listen back to a favorite episode featuring the story of a young farming family with a flock of sheep, on a quest for farmland of their own. We'll learn about their dreams for Three Flock Farm and the opportunities and obstacles along the way.And we share stories from Harvest Public media, including one about how uncertainty in trade agreements with China is affecting US ginseng producers.

“I think our approach is: making it better–improving the land every time we have a chance. We are benefited by the sweetness of the maple, right? So, that's a source of sweetness for us and for the people to come after us. And hopefully the pawpaws will be. One of these days, somebody can enjoy that fruit. Yeah.” This week on the show we explore what it can look like to have a vision for your land that extends beyond yourself and even your family. We speak with Larry Gillen and Helen Vasquez about their decision to gift their farm to a tribal college. And producer Josephine McRobbie visits with a Regenerative Farmer building soil in the sandhills of North Carolina with the help of some four-legged(and winged) “teammates.” 

"We get into a question based on life experience, based on the thoughts that have surfaced for everybody, what if anything are you wondering. What questions come to mind?"On this week's show we talk with Laura Shepper and Kalie Dance about pairing food with art for socially distanced cultural events. We visit a teaching kitchen featuring Japanese food and talk with the chef and owner, Mori Willhite. And we have the story behind a chocolate cake recipe that some people are willing to share, and some aren't.

“Throughout industrial history, the idea behind weeds is very political and it's very constructed. They are only weeds because they get in the way of ideas of how you think that a well kept clean, pristine area would look or like you're trying to reach a certain idea of class.”This week on the third SUMMER episode of our Eats Wild series, we harvest and cook edible weeds (also known as Quelites or wild greens) with Anthropologist Keitlyn Alcantara, and we talk about Indigenous foodways and how to think differently about our relationships with plants.Plus, how to make simple floral syrups from linden and elder flowers. 

“I am a human who yearns to remember that she is part of nature, in a way that I think our culture is trying to make me forget.”This week on the second SUMMER episode of our Eats Wild series, we head out into the woods with two amateur mushroom hunters. Ileana Haberman shares her story of seeking solace gathering chanterelles in the woods during the worst of the pandemic, and Carl Pearson walks us through the basics for positive identification of edible fungi–in this case, a bi-color bolete.Then chef Nick Detrich whips up an elegant salt-baked beet dish featuring wild purslane and wood sorrel from my backyard.

“Studying food is a way to study how we are connected to the world of life around us. Whatever we think about humans being so cerebral, so intellectual–it really breaks down because we are a part of everything else around us.” This week on the show we talk with the author of The Book of Yerba Mate, Christina Folch about how one plant can tell us so much about ourselves, and the world around us. Christine Folch is the Bacca Foundation Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Environmental Sciences & Policy at Duke University.She spoke with Kayte Young about The Book of Yerba Mate: a stimulating history, released in 2024 with Princeton University Press. And, Earth Eats producer Leo Paes brought his Yerba Mate kit into the WFIU studios for a tasting session.

“There is a beautiful Hindustani saying, ‘Kosa kosa per pani badle, chare kosa per vani,' which means "Every two miles the water changes, and every four the language." So that, in fact, is the geography of taste and terroir in India.”This week on the show, we talk with sociologist Krishnendu Ray about place and food and caste in India and how identity can be defined as much by what you DON'T eat, as by what you DO eat.  And we share a recipe for a home grown hot sauce that cannot be prepared indoors.  

This week on the show we're questioning the traditions and assumptions around the role of family in farming. “When something goes wrong in the family relationship, it can really affect the farm business, and when something goes wrong in the farm business, it can really affect the family relationship–which has big implications for things like food security–although we often don't look at it that way.”My guest is sociologist Dr. Ike Leslie, of the University of New Hampshire. Join us for a conversation about Queering the Food System. 

“I often say that the only choice we don't have in such a connected world, the only choice we don't have is whether to change the world--because every act we take and don't take is sending out ripples and we'll never know the impact of our choices.”This week on Earth Eats, a conversation with Frances Moore Lappé. She's the acclaimed author of the groundbreaking book, Diet for a Small Planet, which turned 50 years old in 2021. She's co-founder (with her daughter Anna Lappé) of the Small Planet Institute: living democracy, feeding hope. Lappe has continued the work she began a half-century ago, of bringing analysis and insight to the study of our food systems and how they need to change for our own health and for the health of the planet.  

“Many of the farmers talked about the ability to be out in nature with other members of their family and other members of their community and several of them also talked about the benefits of being able to interact with people from other communities.” This week on the show, we talk with geographer Pablo Bose about innovative resettlement projects that help refugees connect with familiar foods from home, through gardening in community with others.

“There's a different time…what I would say–like a lifely, real time, and to be able to have, at least moments, periodically, in our lives, where we're attuned to that. And the attunement sometimes is also really pleasurable. It's like a deeply pleasurable attunement to ourselves--as not apart from, but in fact, in fact, life…as life.”This week on the show, we pick serviceberries with Ross Gay and contemplate abundance, time and connection with loved ones through foraging. Tracy Branam shows off his expansive wild strawberry patch on the banks of a pond. We talk about following a calendar of wild foods, and looking forward to the delights each season brings. 

“You gotta take the phyllo dough, put it down on your station. One person takes the butter, garlic, lemon juice mixture, wipes it down.  And then someone else spoons on the filling, and then they fold it. And then the butter person butters the outside, puts it in the baking tin. And then you gotta immediately start the next dough...”This week on the show, Kayte Young hands the mic to producer Daniella Richardson for one special episode. As host, Daniella talks with friends about the foundational foods that have shaped their lives and their perspectives on human connection.

“I knew that this was gonna be a little bit of an adventure, because I've never done this before. And so, I'm sure I'm gonna make some stupid mistake that your listeners are gonna be laughing at me while I'm doing this.” From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana, this is earth eats and I'm your host Kayte YoungThis week on the show, just in time for the hot pepper harvest, we revisit a story from 2019 about a novice hot sauce maker and one from 2020 about tasting the hottest of the hot peppers. Plus, a piece about lab studying home sourdough starters and a new story from Harvest about. All that just ahead stay with us. 

“We have about a four acre parcel of land here that's subdivided into a whole bunch of micro-plots, basically, where we can isolate, you know, the Black Strawberry Tomato, or the Chinese Wool Flower or a gourd or whatever it happens to be. And we can make sure that those seeds stay pure. Purity is one of the biggest things that we do here. We do a lot of purity trials, so we maintain that the seed we're selling [to] somebody–we wanna make sure that that seed is 100% true to type.”This week on the show we visit Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company to learn the particulars of growing for plants for seed. And Violet Baron talks with the owners of Lost Farm Meal Service about growing a business during a pandemic. 

“Cooking came to me a little bit later in life. Holidays in my family were always a really big deal, especially around the meals. The meals were the most important part of the holiday gathering. And I was pretty much the least useful person in the kitchen. It wasn't until–even into my mid twenties, at Thanksgiving time, my mom would be like, ‘Mark, you can take the premade Parkerhouse rolls out of the freezer and put them in the oven. That's all we trust you to do'” This week on the show we join a mother and son in a family tradition that has kept them connected across the miles. Mark Chilla and his mother, Gae, tell the story and share the recipe for an Italian, stuffed, savory pie to celebrate the end of lent in the Catholic Faith.Learn all about it in this week's episode, and try the recipe (below).Music on this EpisodeThe Earth Eats theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey.Additional music on this episode from Universal Production Music.Credits:The Earth Eats' team includes: Eoban Binder, Alexis Carvajal, Alex Chambers, Toby Foster, Luann Johnson, Leo Paes, Daniella Richardson, Samantha Shemenaur, Payton Whaley and Harvest Public Media.Earth Eats is produced, engineered and edited by Kayte Young. Our executive producer is Eric Bolstridge.

“I've been mushroom hunting before and you'll kind of squat down and look in between all of the low plants, and then you move to the other side and you look on the other side and all of a sudden you see like four, and they're right there.”This week it's the third installment of our special series, Earth Eats Eats Wild– a nine-part seasonal special all about foraging for wild food. We couldn't wrap up our spring season without a morel hunt–where we share secrets that might help YOU spot a few this year. And we talk with The Forager Chef, Alan Bergo, about  what it's like to eat a pine tree, and we walk through the steps of making spruce tip ice cream. 

“She introduced me to Susan Weed's books, and chickweed is in one of the herbal healing books. And it's talked about as this star-shaped plant that kind of dances–that that's it's energy [laughs].”This week on our special series, Earth Eats Eats Wild, we'll be talking chickweed with Stephanie Solomon, preparing purple deadnettle deviled eggs, harvesting spicebush and ramps in the woods with Jill Vance, and frying up crunchy fritters made with dandelion flowers.

“And you're stepping into–sinking really–into this clay that's surrounding your feet, and there's also some sticks in there, and you know, there's bugs and spiders on the water…”This week on the show we kick off the Eats Wild special series, all about foraging and edible wild plants. Monique Philpot, founder of the forest and folk school Soulcraft Bloomington, takes us out to discover wild food in unexpected places, and shares stories of growing up in two places with different food cultures. We sample treats from feasts prepared by children and by college students, and we talk about what love's got to do with it…with foraging, that is. 

“I had six different people's donations of basil in my dish yesterday, and that's what made it work.” This week on the show, we talk with Heather Craig of the Community Kitchen of Monroe County about cooking for a crowd everyday, improvising in the face of uncertainty, and sourcing ingredients from the community. Plus, stories from Harvest Public Media about rural grocery stores and the effects of the Trump administration USDA cuts on farmers and rural residents. 

“At least a hundred years ago, the last robber barons, we got nice libraries out of it. This one, it's like ‘oh, what is the family using its money for? To gut public education via charter school networks?' It's kind of Machiavellian–it's Machiavellian in a really sad way”This week on the show, I'm talking with Austin Frerick, the author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry. Frerick uncovers the sometimes shocking facts about seven large companies who play an outsized role in our nation's food system. From hog barons to coffee barons, to Indiana's own dairy barons, Fair Oaks farm.

“So if you were a giraffe or an elephant you would go along in your world and you would consume things off of trees. And so we try to mimic, as best we can, what we call browse, which is edible tree material.”This week on the show, Toby Foster talks with Barbara Henry at the Cincinnati Zoo. She's the one who figures out what each of the animals need to eat, where to source their food and the best ways to feed the animals to ensure that they thrive. 

“In the first Trump administration, about 350 thousand people from Central America or Mexico were given these H2A visas to come in temporarily with labor contractors. And many of them seem to have overstayed their visas because their labor is needed. We can't pick the crops in this country without them.”This week on the show, we welcome back geographer Elizabeth Cullen Dunn. She is the director of the Center for Refugee Studies at Indiana University and we'll talk with her about how changes in federal policy, especially around immigration affect our food system, including prices at the grocery store.

“Our younger generation, and mainly the girls, have got hearing, and they can hear that high frequency squeals that the vacuum puts off, and man they can just go in the woods and start finding ‘em and you just cut that out put a connector in, put another one in and they can just run through the woods fixin' holes. Older guys that can't hear, you're a strugglin' trying to find ‘em [laughs].”This week on the show we head out to Groundhog Road Maple Farm in Bedford to learn all about the family business that dates back to the 1880s. Ed Miller and his friends and family have modernized the operation in recent years. We'll learn how the syrup gets from the maple tree in the forest to the pancakes on your plate.

“The goal with the collective is to bridge that gap–so then there is a lot more equity and a lot more opportunity. Because these coffees are incredible and most of the time when they're coming from people of marginalized identities, those people are ensuring that they're honoring  the farmers as well–and so the farmers are then getting equitable pay. And so it's creating that throughout the supply chain.”This week on the show we're talking coffee with Korie Griggs about the Color of Coffee Collective. They're working to support equitable access in the world of specialty coffee. She also has a message about slowing down and taking time to smell the coffee. And we have stories from Harvest Public Media about growing a new super fruit in the Midwest, and returning buffalo to Native tribes.

“When the phorid arrive, the ants release a pheromone that tells their nest mates, all the other ants that are in the vicinity, their sisters that are in the vicinity, tells them ‘Careful! The phorid are here! You better go back to your nest or get paralyzed.'”This week on the show, we get to nerd out on insects with Ivette Perfecto who studies biodiversity and agroecology. She's got some wild stories to tell about bugs on coffee plants and the importance of understanding the delicate balance between species.

“A community is not resilient unless those benefits that we have from natural resources, like urban trees, are distributed in a way that all people are benefiting from them. And we do know that we have areas of the city that have lower canopy cover and some of those are associated also with lower income communities and marginalized communities.  And arguably those are the people [who] would be most benefited  by ecosystem services and the benefits of trees.”This week on the show, a conversation with Sarah Mincey and Hannah Gregory of Canopy Bloomington, an organization dedicated to community engagement with the urban forest.  

“Studying food is a way to study how we are connected to the world of life around us. Whatever we think about humans being so cerebral, so intellectual–it really breaks down because we are a part of everything else around us.” This week on the show we talk with the author of The Book of Yerba Mate, Christine Folch about how one plant can tell us so much about ourselves, and the world around us. 

“[It's] the same old narrative that we hear, that it only happens to white folks and white women. And I argue that eating disorders not only don't discriminate, but they target marginalized communities such as women of color.” This week on the show, a conversation with Gloria Lucas, the founder of Nalgona Positivity Pride We'll be talking about her organization's social justice approach to eating disorders that centers the specific needs of Black Indigenous and communities of color and she'll share details about her new eating disorders harm reduction program.

“Filipino food is not really known like that, especially in Indiana, so we wanted to bring something new.”This week on the show, we visit with the owners of Pinoy Garden Cafe. They talk about what it means to them to bring authentic Filipino cuisine to Bloomington, Indiana and they share a recipe for vegetarian lumpia, a Filipino style spring roll that locals can't seem to get enough of. Plus a story from Harvest Public Media about complications for farmers interested in growing hemp.

Have you ever had a hunch about something, tested it out and been shocked by the results? That's what happened to pharmaceutical microbiologist Funmi Ayeni. She took a traditional Nigerian home remedy and applied the rigors of scientific research to test its efficacy. The results were nothing short of jaw dropping. This week on Earth Eats, food research that could end up saving lives.

A man obsessed with making pizza at home shares his secrets and a local home cook shares Clara Kinsey's persimmon pudding recipe.

“I love cookies. They're hands-on, there's a lot of technique involved in them,  they're really fun and easy to do with kids,  they bake quickly,they're perfect for gift giving any time of year, and they're great. Holidays and baking go hand in hand. Join us for a collection of favorite wintery stories for the holiday season with Earth Eats. We drop in on a cookie baking workshop with kids at a food pantry, we enjoy a hot cup of coffee on a chilly bike ride, and we toast up a batch of maple granola for holiday gift giving. All that, plus CHESTNUTS on this special episode of Earth Eats.

“Now, I love food!  Let the people know–let the people in the back know, I–hey, I love food. I plan vacations around the top food spots. So, I love food. But I just don't enjoy cooking”This week on the show we hear the story about a local business, Popcorn Kernels With a Twist. We speak with the owner, Virginia Githiri about what motivates her to run her own food business, since she doesn't really like to cook.