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Bonny Wolf

NPR commentator Bonny Wolf grew up in Minnesota and has worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in New Jersey and Texas. She taught journalism at Texas A&M University where she encouraged her student, Lyle Lovett, to give up music and get a real job. Wolf gives better advice about cooking and eating, and contributes her monthly food essay to NPR's award-winning Weekend Edition Sunday. She is also a contributing editor to "Kitchen Window," NPR's Web-only, weekly food column.

Wolf 's commentaries are not just about what people eat, but why: for comfort, nurturance, and companionship; to mark the seasons and to celebrate important events; to connect with family and friends and with ancestors they never knew; and, of course, for love. In a Valentine's Day essay, for example, Wolf writes that nearly every food from artichoke to zucchini has been considered an aphrodisiac.

Wolf, whose Web site is www.bonnywolf.com, has been a newspaper food editor and writer, restaurant critic, and food newsletter publisher, and served as chief speechwriter to Secretaries of Agriculture Mike Espy and Dan Glickman.

Bonny Wolf's book of food essays, Talking with My Mouth Full, will be published in November by St. Martin's Press. She lives, writes, eats and cooks in Washington, D.C.

  • Will we still be eating kale? What's changing in food as we begin 2016, and what can we expect?
  • The side salad has undergone an evolution in mainstream America, from the simple heavily dressed chunk of lettuce, to vibrant kitchen-sink medleys. Now, in many areas, a bounty of local, seasonal ingredients is at our fingertips, helping to elevate the side salad to star status.
  • On a recent trip, Weekend Food Commentator Bonny Wolf was taken by surprise by Australia's stunningly diverse cuisine, especially the dizzying array of exotic seafood like yabbies and marron at the Sydney Fish Market.
  • It's widely eaten in the rest of world, and now goat's popularity is growing in America's increasingly diverse marketplace. Bring goat into your kitchen with these recipes for curry, mole rojo, meatballs and more — or churn up a sweet goat-milk caramel ice cream.
  • Lots of creepy crawly things will appear on doorsteps and fence posts for Halloween, but will they be on your dinner plate? Insects are being proposed as a cheap and environmentally friendly food source. Long accepted around the world, eating bugs is considered, well, gross to many in North America and Europe.
  • During the harvest season, farms across the country are inviting their neighbors to an elegant multicourse meal with the farmers at the food's source.
  • Beneath their homely exteriors, celery root, Jerusalem artichokes, jicama and other tubers and roots have a lot to offer — adding flavor, color and texture to the winter pot. And now these gnarly undergrounders are starting to step into the limelight.
  • Millions of chicken wings will be eaten at Super Bowl parties across the country Sunday, and a lot of them will get their kick from the rising star of condiments.
  • If you've had enough of the seemingly ubiquitous butternut squash soup, have no fear. Butternut and acorn squash are making way for varieties like kabocha and jarrahdale. Yes, squash is the latest "it" fruit, so it's time to go beyond butternut.
  • It was inevitable that interest in local, sustainable, ethical eating would lead back to hunting. Weekend Edition food commentator Bonny Wolf shares her experience attending a wild-game-friendly dinner party.