SXSW 2011: The New Melting Pot

Ann Powers

A few minutes after 2 a.m. Sunday morning – closing time in most places, but just another occasion for swarming revelry at South by Southwest – a friend and I prepared to enter 6th Street, the most swollen point in the Austin music festival’s human stream. My pal, a young journalist, cheerily expressed futility. “How do you find a thread in all of this?” he asked “It’s no one thing.” He was right. To fashion any single narrative from the thousands of sets...

Four Days Into SXSW 2011, Endurance Pays Off

Ann Powers

It’s midafternoon on the last full day of South by Southwest, and I’m singing a James Brown song to myself. I feel good! Happiness isn’t a given during this annual pop music endurance fest. With artists at every level playing for a chance to pull a career-making prize from the fest’s goodie bag, and music biz folks trying to make their own profitable connections, tension can overcome fun during the five-day fest’s frantic runaround. The longing...

Actor Wendell Pierce Takes To Twitter To Talk About 'The Help'

Linda Holmes

Twitter takes an understandable beating for pushing everyone to speak in 140-character bursts, and for not encouraging proofreading, and for not always encouraging civility, and for … quite a number of things, really.

But that doesn't mean it can't be enlightening at times, like when actor Wendell Pierce — who stars on Treme, and who played Bunk Moreland on The Wire, and who has generally gotten around to an amazing degree over the last 20...

A Look "Behind The Barn" At Local Foods

Chad Houck

Residents of southwestern Pennsylvania are being urged to "put a face to your food" by exploring what local farms have to offer and learning about their growing practices. The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) is hosting its 5th annual Buy Fresh Buy Local Farms Tour this Saturday from 1-5 p.m.

The tours highlight nine farms in Allegheny, Butler, Fayette, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland Counties that...

The Pawpaw: Foraging For America's Forgotten Fruit

Allison Aubrey

So what the heck is a pawpaw?

Recently, I heard about a secret snack. Kayakers who paddle the waters near Washington, D.C., told me about a mango-like fruit that grows along the banks of the Potomac — a speckled and homely skin that hides a tasty treat.

A tropical-like fruit here, really? Yep. It's the only temperate member of a tropical family of trees. You can't buy the...

Cooking With Boar: A Walk On The Wild Side

Lynda Balslev

"Mom, there are shotgun pellets in my ragu" is not usually what you want to hear as you start dinner. On a family trip to Italy last summer, though, it was not entirely unexpected in the middle of an excursion to the Umbrian countryside, where we were immersing ourselves in all things local. It happened at a members-only eating club, discreetly placed on a tiny side street in the incongruously suburban neighborhood of Panicarola, near Castigliano del Lago. We got reservations...

Going Whole Hog: Reporter Makes Way Through 60-Pound Pig

Jennifer Szweda Jordan

A couple years ago, I heard that a farmer was selling whole whey-fed pigs to some of the area’s top chefs. I wanted one! This was a tasty form of recycling, after all. The farmer was using the byproduct of his cheesemaking — whey — for animal feed. I was told that the result was exquisitely creamy meat. I didn’t think the whole hog thing through, though. So when I got a call early one morning saying that a pig with my name on it had received its death sentence, I...

Christmas Eve, A Feast, Fry Pans And Seven Fishes

Katherine Perry

The southern Italian Christmas Eve tradition known as the Feast of the Seven Fishes has become a tradition for Italian-American families as well.

Cindy Coddington, who grew up with the traditional meal in her family, remembers the day as a whirlwind of family and fry pans.

"Ours was fried shrimp, fried scallops, pan-fried smelts, calamari cut up in rings and fried. And I'll tell you after the holidays, you really couldn't stand the sight of any more...