More than four decades ago, The Tassajara Bread Book opened up with the following epigram:
“We need more cooks, not more cookbooks.”
Now we have a lot more of both, plus video. Here are few of the latest gems of the genre:
My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method,Jim Lahey (W.W. Norton & Company)
A bread one doesn’t knead calls to mind a cake mix with a slew of mystery ingredients and food science. But Lahey’s bread has only four ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast, and the yeast is a fraction of … » More …
Few of us will ever see inside the homes of some of the Pacific Northwest’s major art collectors. But this fall we get a glimpse when the Museum of Art at Washington State University hosts an exhibit of internationally-known architect Jim Olson’s houses built for art.
Olson’s clients collect works by Alexander Calder, Edward Hopper, and Henri Matisse, and they seek out modern sculpture, pre-Columbian artifacts, and antique Southeast Asian artworks. Some of them are sharing images of their homes, as well as art from their own collections, with WSU.
With large photographs dominating the gallery space, it will be almost as if you … » More …
Diane Szukovathy from Jello Mold Farm in Washington state’s Skagit Valley puts together a bouquet of locally-grown flowers and offers tips to gardeners on building their own bouquet of blooms. Diane and her husband Dennis Westphall grow cut flowers. They have teamed up with Washington State University researchers Bev Gerdeman and Lynell Tanigoshi to build a community of local, seasonal flower growers in the Pacific Northwest. The growers sell at markets, directly to farmers, florists, grocery stores, and local businesses. Read more in “Business is Blooming.”
Jim Haguewood demonstrates how to clean a crab. Haguewood, a 1981 graduate of Washington State University’s hotel and restaurant management programs, has been eating and cleaning crab for as long as he can remember. His family owned the Haguewoods Restaurant in Port Angeles, Washington, for 58 years.
He is a former director of the Clallam County Economic Development Council and works with the Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival in Port Angeles.
Jim says his favorite way to eat Dungeness crab is the simplest: cooked in salted water and then chilled.
For 40 years, Washington State University alumnus John Elwood has followed that beat to create music and instruments.
Making something from nothing, to share with others, is his delight, he said. He carves wood into a variety of instruments. He also makes “canjos”—a take-off of a banjo made from string, a solid wood neck and a can. The can from Cougar Gold—a cheese made at the WSU Pullman creamery—is a local favorite.
To learn more about Elwood, his music and the canjo, watch the video:
Nicole Braux Taflinger was only 13 when the Germans invaded France in 1940. She has published a memoir of her time growing up in Nancy, Lorraine, called Season of Suffering: Coming of Age in Occupied France, published by Washington State University Press in 2010. In it she recalls the severe shortages, collaboration, disappearances, and despair and hope of a teenage girl. After Nancy was liberated, Nicole met a dashing young American airman named Ancel Taflinger, General Patton’s personal pilot. They married and eventually settled in Pullman, Washington.
In this narrated slideshow, Nicole talks about some of her photos and her youth.
John Elwood, a maker of fine musical instruments and a 2001 graduate of Washington State University, crafts banjos from WSU cheese cans (like the iconic Cougar Gold).
Gary P. Brinson, nationally recognized investment fund manager and 1968 graduate of Washington State University, gives advice to investors and consumers in the 2010s. He describes the downturn in the economy and possible solutions for people who want to save and weather the storm.
Brinson managed a record trillion dollars in investments in the late ’90s, earned the highest honor of the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute (an award given to such notables as Warren Buffett), and is a lifetime member of the Horatio Alger Association. WSU honored Brinson with the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award in fall 2010.
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.
“It is impossible to imagine a world-class university without an arboretum. It reconnects you to the earth and is an important place for a university community to find peace and balance in a high-stress environment. Im particularly proud that this arboretum will be part of the legacy that my administration will leave for Washington State University, its faculty, students, alumni, and friends, and all those who value the joys of nature.”
—WSU President Elson S. Floyd
Phase 1 of the Washington State University Arboretum and Wildlife Conservation Center project celebrates the first peoples of the region and the striking Palouse prairie landscape … » More …
