The Foodist

The Ann Arbor Area Craft Pass is a free digital experience that incentivizes locals and visitors to explore the many craft breweries and distilleries in the Ann Arbor area. With 14 local businesses included within the passport, users will…

by Ari LeVaux It’s a noun. It’s a verb. It’s a way of life. “Creamy,” said my friend Luci Brieger, when I asked how her summer was going. Creamy has many meanings at her farm, Lifeline Produce in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, all of them…

by Ari LeVaux “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” asked then-Senator Barack Obama, during an Iowa campaign rally in 2007. There was no Whole Foods in Iowa at the time, and his gaffe, and the…

by Jeffrey Miller Nothing says Christmas quite like a fruitcake – or, at the very least, a fruitcake joke. A quip attributed to former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson has it that “There is only one fruitcake in the entire…

by Ari LeVaux When I go to the coffee shop, it’s usually not for the coffee. Only one or two spots in town can brew a better cup than I. They have expensive, well-maintained espresso machines, carefully roasted beans and baristas who…

by Ari LeVaux A properly put together BLT is the Bruce Lee of sandwiches. It’s lean and light and full of fight. Just a few strips of bacon give you all the meat necessary for this black-belt combination of tomato, onion, mayo,…

by Ari Levaux Grilled pizza does not sound like the highest use of a grill or a pizza. Wouldn’t the bottom of the crust burn into a blackened crisp long before the cheese melts? Luckily, nobody told Johanne Killeen and George Germon,…

by Ari Levaux Across the Northern Hemisphere at about this time, garlic plants are reaching for the sun. Each clove planted last fall has divided and swollen into a bulb of cloves, while the flowers emerge in a circuitous path. Each…

by Ari Leveaux Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other ––Neal Cassidy In the middle of the night, partway through a cross-country drive, I unfolded myself from…

by Ari LeVaux The Spanish state of emergency was to go into effect at midnight. At the only restaurant in the Toba valley, Comidas Caseras Carmen, some folks had gathered for a birthday party. The television was blasting scenes of…