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Fall 2024

Food

Summer 2011

Kristine (McClary) Vannoy ’87—The⁠ facts⁠ of⁠ fudge

“I’m easy to spot. I’m six-foot-two,” says Kristine (McClary) Vannoy, as we plan our meeting at an upscale grocery in Seattle. But when she appears, it’s not her height that’s eye-catching, or even her long red hair. It’s the packages of freshly-made fudge that fill her hands.

Vannoy (’87 Comm.) is the founder, owner, and main employee of Fat Cat Fudge, a company that makes three different varieties of fudge sold in 20 grocery stores in the Puget Sound area.

“It’s a fresh fudge,” she says. “It’s not meant to sit on a shelf for six months in a candy … » More …

Summer 2010

Interview with Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan has been a leading voice in the re-evaluation of how we eat and farm. The author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, the book selected for this year’s Common Reading, Pollan visited campus in January to talk with the students who had been discussing his book and present a lecture on “The Sun-Food Agenda.” Washington State Magazine’s Tim Steury interviewed him by phone prior to his visit. The following is an edited version of their conversation:

WSM: There’s been a real sea change in how we think about food in this country. I wonder if you could address what … » More …

Fall 2003

Tasting Washington

The setting is elegant, the food divine, the wine fine and endless and magnificently diverse. On a Sunday evening in June, the Grand Pennington Ballroom at Spokane’s Davenport Hotel is filled with representatives of more than 60 Washington wineries and 20 area restaurants, caterers, and markets-and hundreds of Washington wine devotees.

Taste Washington has paired samplings of Washington food and wine, much to the gathering’s enjoyment. In the process, the celebrants are supporting Washington State University’s fledgling Viticulture and Enology Program and the School of Hospitality Business Management, as well as the Davenport District Arts Board.

A celebratory note also resonates among the participants who … » More …

Winter 2004

The Circle of Life and the Farmer's Daughters

Determined that, contrary to popular assumption, bread flour could indeed be grown in the Inland Northwest, a few years ago Fred Fleming ’73 and Karl Kupers ’71 started growing Terra, a new variety of hard red spring wheat developed by Washington State University wheat breeder Kim Kidwell. They named their business Columbia Plateau Producers and their flour Shepherd’s Grain.

Visualize how a small operation under the big skies of eastern Washington moves into the full-court press of deep-pocketed global business activity. Farmers talking to millers, bakers, and consumers. Convivial conversations that put loaves of bread on the table and spread the message about soil health … » More …

Fall 2005

Operation Chow Hound

In 1945, the German occupation had Holland on its knees. The Dutch were starving, because the Germans were not supplying them with food. Adelderd Davids of Nijmegen, Holland, six years old at the time, lived in Rotterdam. “It was awful,” he recalls. “We ate tulip bulbs. Some people ate rats, because there was absolutely nothing. We had two or three potatoes for 10 people. Our mother would ask after dinner, ‘Who is still hungry? You can eat the peelings.’ On a feast day they made a torte out of the bulbs.”

England’s Royal Air Force and the United States 8th Air Force joined together to … » More …