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Agriculture

Winter 2010

Video: Chickpea research at WSU

George Vandemark, the current USDA legume breeder and a faculty member at Washington State University, describes research into chickpeas. Chickpeas, also called garbanzo beans, are an important crop around the Palouse and Pullman, the main campus of WSU. The chickpea provides nitrogen for the soil as well as a high-protein crop. Most chickpeas are used for hummus or salads.

 

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Chickpeas

Chickpea recipes

Winter 2010

Chickpeas

Although Middle Eastern cooks who found themselves in the United States undoubtedly found sources of such a vital ingredient, it wasn’t until the last couple of decades that the chickpea made its way into the American diet and moved up from the bottom shelf at the supermarket. It can be said with some confidence that chickpeas did not find their way into church carry-ins (potlucks to you non-Midwesterners) until very recently.

The chickpea’s introduction to American cuisine probably started with the salad bar, suggests Phil Hinrichs ’80, president of Hinrichs Trading Company, which processes and distributes chickpeas primarily to a domestic market. Remember those odd … » More …

Video: Grilling Walla Walla Sweet Onions

Recipe

Ingredients
Walla Walla Sweet onions
Olive oil
A grill

Peel and slice the onions very thick, about an inch.

Heat the grill. Put the Walla Walla Sweets on the grill when it’s ready. Brush with olive oil as necessary.

When the onions are softened slightly and warm, remove them from the grill and enjoy.

Don’t overcook the Walla Walla Sweets. They only need a little grilling to make them even sweeter.

Video

Tim Steury grills up some Walla Walla Sweets, while describing why these onions are special and how they were brought to Walla Walla. 2 minutes, 53 seconds.

Read about … » More …

Fall 2010

Walla Walla Sweets

When retired French soldier Pete Pieri settled in Walla Walla around the turn of the 20th century, he planted onion seed he had brought from Corsica. His new neighbors, Italian gardeners who had settled there earlier, admired the ability of the onion to winter over in the ground, which gave it a good size for an early summer harvest. The bonus, notes Walla Walla horticultural historian Joe Locati, was its mild flavor. The Italians called it the “French onion” (though it was actually Italian), and by 1910, it was about the only summer onion grown in the area.

In late May this year, Paul Castoldi … » More …

Fall 2010

The Cultivated Landscape

One place you must add to your “must-visit-before-I-die” list is the Wenatchee Valley during full bloom of the pear and apple orchards in late April. Perhaps you’ve seen Van Gogh’s lovely, but not often reproduced, painting “The Pink Orchard.” It’s very simple, a small orchard in bloom. But it’s so simple and lovely it will make you cry with desire. Now imagine it juxtaposed with one of those sublime Western landscapes by Bierstadt. Impossible? Of course. But keep trying. Imagine these vast orchards, all in bloom. And behind them loom the magnificent Cascades, still etched with late spring snow. Once you have it in focus, … » More …

Fall 2010

The meat of the matter

Dan Snyder can remember when local grocery stores would only buy one case of Cougar Brand Smokies at a time. Now, it’s unusual for them to buy fewer than three or four. And when they run out, the Washington State University Meats Lab manager’s phone starts ringing.

The meats lab building is tucked into the parking lot behind the Lewis Alumni Centre. It is primarily a teaching facility, used for animal science classes and agriculture industry professionals to learn how to evaluate live animals and grade and process animal carcasses. It’s also home to one of the most popular meat products on the Palouse.

Fall 2010

Tree Top: Creating a fruit revolution

treetop-bookcover

David H. Stratton

WSU Press

 

In the September 10, 1951, issue of Life magazine is a picture of a bulldozer mounding apples in the Yakima dump. Seven acres of apples worth $6 million dollars rotted as pigs rooted through them, the result of failing foreign markets and high tariffs. At the time, if Washington’s apples didn’t sell, orchardists paid $5 a ton to have their culls hauled off to rot.

Culls are rejected from the fresh fruit market due primarily to shape, size, or color, but they are perfectly sound for such traditional uses as juice. The … » More …

Fall 2010

Too much of a good thing

Science has been predicting and measuring our warming planet for more than a century now. But it was only in the last two decades that most Americans came to believe the earth’s temperature was indeed rising and that the main culprit is the growing amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Now scientists are giving a lot of thought to another culprit: nitrogen. Like carbon dioxide, it’s seemingly benign—colorless, odorless, tasteless, and a foundation of life on our planet. Left alone, it tightly binds to itself in inert, two-atom molecules, or N2. It’s ridiculously commonplace, making up four-fifths of our atmosphere. It’s also a modern … » More …

Fall 2010

Cows deposit piles of diversity

Holly Ferguson knows her cow pies about as well as anyone. In the first study of flies in managed pastures in the Pacific Northwest, the entomologist has spent an unusual amount of time traveling the state and assessing its cow pies.

No matter the obvious jokes, dung dispersal in pastures is serious business. Wherever there are cows, there will be cow dung, and lots of it. A beef cow can produce nearly a ton of manure per month. And if that ton sits there untended, there will be problems.

Oddly enough, the conditions of the cow’s other major habitat, the feedlot, reduce the problem … » More …

Fall 2010

The kinder, gentler orchard

The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 initiated the gradual phasing out of organophosphate pesticides. By 2012, the major chemical defense against wormy apples will no longer be available. But not to worry, thanks to a continuous refinement of Integrated Pest Management and collaboration amongst growers, industry fieldmen, and WSU researchers.

» More ...