An online magazine from Whole Foods Market, Dark Rye brings together pioneers of unconventional ideas to explore the edges of the creative life. Here on the Dark Rye Tumblr, we’ll compile a mixtape of their secrets—a daily how-to and counter-convention dose of sass and entrepreneurialism for your own neighborhood.
We’ll offer perspective on our monthly themes as well as the pioneer’s blueprint: fresh insight and an idea-starter that makes every day feel like a sleeves-rolled-up Saturday morning in spring. Hang out here to stay revived between Dark Rye feasts.
328 posts tagged dark rye
Tip: When he says ‘Lamb’s Quarters’, he’s not talking baaa. Get your greens without paying. Sergei will teach you. Wild foraging at DARK RYE: Roots Issue.
You’re a Russian who doesn’t eat meat. That doesn’t fit with my ideas about Russians, except for how much they like cold beet soup. Can you eat traditional Russian cuisine and be a vegetarian?
In the 80s, both my parents were vegetarians in Russia, and the joke at the time was that if you were a vegetarian, you were fasting.
How did you end up in the States?
My parents were really political. The wall had just come down and they were among the few who started a successful business, but corrupt government officials threatened them to give up a cut of the profits or be shut down. When they wouldn’t, they froze my parents’ bank account. My mom has a bullet that was shot at her.
So what you’re saying is that there really is such a thing as Russian gangsters, and it’s Russian gangsters who chased you all the way to a farm in Montana.
Totally. I was five years old. It was 1990—my mom got a job in Denver, and we all emigrated, intending to go back to Russia after she taught for a year. But in the time we were here, pretty much all of our stuff in Russia had been looted, stolen, or destroyed.
Do you remember the first lukewarm drive-thru burger you ever ate? Do you remember the last one?
In Russia back then, there was bread, meat, cabbage, and vodka. That’s pretty much it. We came to America and we were just stunned—there were fifty different kinds of everything. We figured that Americans were so advanced, so scientific, that we ought to go to the grocery store on payday and try it all. So we did.
We got gluttonous, not realizing how unhealthy it is to eat that way—pizzas, cheese, junk. We all got diagnosed with some kind of disease within a year of one another. Diabetes, arrhythmia, hyperthyroid, asthma, arthritis. We turned to the medical industry, which of course recommended pills, shots, and surgeries.
A hospital is way less fun than a sandwich with daisies in it.
Yeah, it’s less fun than just about anything. We didn’t have the money for it anyway, so in a very Russian way, my mom started stopping healthy-looking people on the street to ask what they ate. She scared a good fifty people before she met a woman in a bank lineup who said I know exactly what you need.
Raw food, back then, wasn’t near as popular as it is today. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains. Almost instantly, we all started feeling better. We felt so good, we wondered if it was a placebo. But it wasn’t.
More on PCT-hiker, wild edibles expert, and Russian mafia out-runner Sergei Boutenko—and why you can pretty much follow him anywhere when the machines turn on us—at DARK RYE’s Roots Issue.
“Well,” said Pooh, “What I like best…” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
The Beekeeper (by Dark Rye)
One man forages his way south-to-north on the Pacific Crest Trail. Bow down. More at DARK RYE’s Roots Issue.
A thousand square feet, even in the city, is farm-worthy. Heidi Kooy grows and makes cheese in San Fransisco, accompanied by a bunch of chicks and more than just one kid. ~ DarkRye.com Itty Bitty Farm (by Dark Rye)
This outstanding salad is loaded with flavor and packed with nutrient-rich ingredients. Baking the salmon for the recipe is easy, but you can also use leftover grilled or poached salmon. Find baby kale in the packaged salad greens section…
Hi. I’m a king salmon, and before I head up over to that nest in the gravel and fertilize the little eggs lying there, I thought I’d take a few minutes to tell you my story. Like many of my brothers and sisters, I was born in the headwaters of Washington’s Lewis River. Mom was a 22-pounder who made the same journey as me. When she got here, no trumpets were blaring, and there was no red carpet—but there should’ve been…
More at DARK RYE’s Ritual Issue: A Salmon’s Journey by Kirk Lombard
Every morning, Kumar Pallana wakes up, goes to the bathroom, makes a cup of chai and counts his japa mala, until he reaches a state of ajapajapam. If that last run of words confused you, that’s cool. Remain in the tension of disorientation. All will be revealed.
“That’s all I do. This,” Pallana says, holding his mala, a set of 108 Hindu prayer beads. Japa is the process of counting beads, 108 per minute, while repeating a mantra consisting of the names of several Hindu deities. Pallana performs japa while watching WWE professional wrestling with the sound turned down. Ajapajapam is a heightened state of consciousness, wherein Pallana himself no longer repeats the mantra; the mantra repeats itself. It was once believed that one’s truest self was met only through the loss of self in ritual.
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