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How to Make Coffee

By David Alan

If, according to singer Paul Simon, there are 50 ways to leave your lover, then perhaps there are just as many ways to awaken your beloved morning paramour. I’m talking about coffee, of course. There are many things to consider. What kind of brewing method is best? What to brew—a blend or a single origin? Whole bean or freshly ground? Arabica or Robusta? Light or dark roast? Does it really matter if it’s locally roasted coffee? And what do fair trade and direct trade really mean?

Craft Beer Crusaders

By Kristi Willis
Photography by Dustin Meyer

Belly up to the bar at your favorite Austin pub and you’re likely to find a bevy of taps from Texas breweries—Real Ale, (512), Saint Arnold, Independence, Live Oak—and the list keeps growing. The craft-brewing industry is exploding, representing 97 percent of the more than 1,800 breweries in the U.S. as of August 2011, according to the Brewers Association.

Pop-Up Happy Hours

Soy What?

By Allison Reyna

Over the past two decades, the consumption of products derived from soybeans has increased dramatically in the United States. According to the Soyfoods Association of North America, sales of soy food products increased from $1 billion in 1996 to over $5.2 billion in 2011. Before the early ’90s, it was difficult to find any soy products in the American grocery store, but today, our grocery stores are brimming with soy milk, soy cheese, soy yogurt, soy burgers, soy nuts and soy ice cream.

Sandstone Cellars Winery

By Terry Thompson-Anderson
Photography by Sandy Wilson

Mason County, Texas is becoming known as an excellent region for growing Mediterranean grape varietals. The combination of Hickory Sands soil and moderate weather has proven exceptional for creating wines with a particularly distinctive Lone Star terroir. Currently, there are seven grape-growers in Mason County who provide fruit to many of the state’s well-known wineries like Fall Creek Vineyards, Becker Vineyards and Torre di Pietra Winery, as well as to Sandstone Cellars Winery, an up-and-coming winery garnering some second and third looks.

The Devil in You

Story and Photography by Lucinda Hutson

Whenever I visit my hometown of El Paso, my mother inevitably manages to invite too many last-minute guests for the cocktail hour. This is usually more a joy than a problem, but on a recent trip, Mom assumed I'd be able to magically conjure up tasty tidbits for our guests even though her fridge was practically empty. I improvised with what was on hand: some hard-boiled eggs, the remaining bit of my brother's scrumptious chunky blue-cheese dressing, some crunchy veggies and a few slices of bacon.

Ask the Permie Pro

By Dick Pierce

Dear Gardening Folks, Thinking-about-its and Wannabes,
It’s June in Central Texas and our long, hot summer is here. Gardens and gardeners are stressed over the hot temperatures ahead. What to do? 

If you’re one of the lucky or smart ones that planted in mid-January through March, you’ve probably had a good harvest. April through June has been one of the best spring gardening seasons in years. Congratulations! Now it’s time to finish up the harvest and put your beds to bed under a cooling, moist blanket of compost mulch for the long, hot summer. Several of your veggies—most notably tomatoes—will go semi-dormant in the hot weather, but if you cut them back, mulch them well and water them occasionally, they’ll wake up in September and use their extensive root system to zoom back to life for a second crop.

If you missed the glorious spring season, or you simply don’t wish to take a summer siesta, there’s still some work you can do.

5 Mile Farms

The minds behind Resolution Gardens already had a great thing going. For the past three years, the nonprofit, led by Austin Green Art founder Randy Jewart, has been empowering people to grow their own food by installing raised beds in their yards and offering the support and maintenance necessary to keep their gardens growing. The idea was to encourage people to grow their own food, no matter how busy, ill-equipped or uninformed they felt. Now, 5 Mile Farms, Jewart’s latest brainchild, takes that concept even further by making it a neighborhood initiative.

Yes, We Can

By MM Pack
Photo courtesy of TAMU Cushing Memorial Library and Archives

For thousands of years, humankind has preserved foods. Via dehydration, heating, cooling, freezing, fermenting, smoking, pickling and preserving with salt or sugar, people around the world figured out how to make foods last from summer growing seasons through lean winters, from bountiful harvest years through years of drought, want and war. And along the way, we’ve come to appreciate the varieties and transformations of flavor, texture and aroma that food preservation creates.

Stella Alesi

Cheese Balls

By Lucinda Hutson
Photography by John Pozdro

This ain’t your mama’s cheese ball! Instead, sharp cheddar mingles with crushed cayenne, heady spices and freshly minced autumn herbs; tequila-spiked fruit chutney is the crowning touch. Fun and filling, savory cheese balls add delight to harvest feasts and holiday tables as appetizers or desserts. Serve them with wedges of crisp apples or pears, crackers or biscotti, or let guests slather slices of rustic bread for open-faced sandwiches, perhaps made heartier with roasted or grilled pork tenderloin or smoked turkey. 

Doing Time in the Garden

By Spike Gillespie

It’s early afternoon on a gorgeous autumn day as Municipal Judge Ronald Jones drives around Smithville checking on four community gardens. There’s one by the Smithville Food Pantry, another across the street from Brown Primary School and two behind the Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church. Currently fallow, the plots will sprout and thicken soon enough, and be ready to receive those who’ve broken the law on Jones’s watch.

Fredericksburg Grassfed Beef

By Helen Cordes
Photography by Andy Sams

When Chuck Schmidt hollers for his young charges on a recent afternoon, the placid Angus and Herefords moo back and start ambling toward him in a languid procession. The line of contented cattle brings a satisfied smile to Chuck’s sunburned profile—each animal carries the lineage of cows that for over 50 years have grazed these same hills surrounding the 1888 Schmidt family home nestled on the Pedernales River.

Argus Cidery

By Veronica Meewes
Photography by Dustin Meyer 

You might say that Argus Cidery founder Wes Mickel likes a challenge. The 27-year-old moved to Austin knowing the apple supply was so limited that nobody else had ever attempted to produce a hard cider here. Rather than discourage him, though, this news had the opposite effect. “I talked to three growers,” Mickel says, “and no one was making any wines out of their apples. That really excited me because I knew, with the climate, they were just going to be exploding with sugar. And they were.”

Future of Texas Wine

By Terry Thompson-Anderson, CCP 
Art by Jan Heaton
Photography by Randy Allbritton

Often, when pondering the future, it’s of great benefit to examine the past. Viewed in terms of its past, Texas winemaking has a long and rich heritage from which to draw. The lands that now comprise the state of Texas are among the oldest wine-producing regions in the United States, but the newest to establish an industry of winemaking. In fact, wine grapes were planted in Texas more than a hundred years before they were planted in California.

Dewberry Hills Farm

By Elizabeth Winslow
Photography by Jody Horton

Jane Levan always said she’d leave Austin when the last goat left Brodie Lane. That day came in 1999, when she realized that South Austin was no longer the semirural oasis she and her husband Terry had discovered in the mid-1980s. The couple bought a 20-acre piece of property in Lexington with plenty of room for their horses to roam, and embraced country life anew.

Herb Appeal

Story and Photography by Judy Barrett

One of the great things about autumn in Austin is that we get to experience the whole range of the seasons within about a 24-hour period. It’s winter when we rise and blazing summer by mid-afternoon, with a blink of spring and fall mixed in—making it challenging to know just how to dress or what to plan for outdoor activities. For the gardener, however, autumn is the perfect time for planting just about everything. Need to add trees to the landscape or plant some wonderful antique roses? This is the right time.

How to Cook Fish

By Alain Braux
Photography by Carole Topalian

Does cooking fish intimidate you? It used to intimidate me too. But ever since I learned how it’s done in professional kitchens, I’m not afraid anymore.

Before I became a nutritionist, I was (and still am) a pastry chef and baker by trade, so cooking fish was very far from my area of expertise. To make matters worse, I grew up with my grandmother on a small farm in Normandy—far from any big city or the sea coast.