- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, Africa, in the early 1980s, Jeff Dahlberg was intrigued by sorghum, a staple food being cultivated by the country’s vast population of poor subsistence farmers.
“I was impressed with the fact that sorghum was so drought tolerant,” Dahlberg said. “They used no irrigation at all.”
More than 30 years later, Dahlberg, the director of the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, is still impressed with sorghum and believes it has potential to be a significant crop in California, where water is a serious concern.
Sorghum isn’t a new crop to the...
- Author: Mary E. Reed
For the past 10 weeks we have been experimenting with a gluten-free diet. The primary household beneficiary of this dietary scheme was already very thin, and his favorite foods, wouldn’t you know it, were gluten-ladened items such as donuts, cinnamon rolls, pancakes, and toasted English muffins.
Researching gluten-free recipes has unearthed a wealth of information about various ways to prepare these favorite items, made without gluten, so they taste and look good. Usually, simple substitution of gluten-free flours for wheat flour tends to render traditional recipes either too wet or too dry, crumbly, tough or tasteless. We learned that the addition of a small amount of xanthan or guar gum helps to thicken and bind together the...