The key is to have more than one pomegranate or branch of longans at the ready. You never know when the “star” will start to wilt—or be rotten to the core—and you’ll need the understudy to quickly step in.

I don’t know which excited my young reporter-in-training partner more: The purple stove (her favorite color) or being surrounded by other kids in front of canvases with the lightly penciled outline of a cow on them.

Narrowing down the Twin Cities food and beverage talent to three finalists in nine categories proved to be much more difficult than finding a convenient parking spot near US Bank Stadium during the Super Bowl.

Getting information on corrections kitchens is surprisingly difficult. If not shrouded in secrecy, the business of incarceration foodservice is certainly no bulwark of receptivity, either.

The restaurant’s name isn’t even on the building and only two of the teardrop-shaped campers and two yurt-style tents have staked their claim on the glampgrounds, and yet, the Wunderbar Eatery and Glampgrounds is already hosting parties.

It was a little more stressful than being on TV’s "Chopped," because in addition to a live audience in front of them, chefs had to create delicious dishes for a panel of four judges, using MREs.

The last time I lunched with Lisa Sarazin, her last name was Hanson and she fixed me a decadent dish at the bar before returning to the kitchen to prepare for the dinner service. I was at her downtown Minneapolis restaurant, Mona Restaurant and Bar.

When Tunde Wey hosted a dinner for 700 at the Seward Community Co-op’s annual owner meeting in October, it wasn’t about the food, although he spent hours preparing Nigerian dishes for the members.

In a nondescript building off University Avenue in SE Minneapolis hangs a “scandalous” painting of Betty Crocker.

A recent tour of Taher owned-and-operated Fresh Seasons Cafe at the Capitol introduced me to Juanita Caballero, a spot-on, mid-rare, all locally produced burger and the idea that cafeteria food needn’t be impersonal or an afterthought.

CommonGround is a national organization of farm women who volunteer to share information about farming and food.

Randall Prudden went from working in the action-packed kitchen of Spoon and Stable in the North Loop of Minneapolis to the calm serenity of Canoe Bay, a 300-acre country estate in northwestern Wisconsin.