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Taj Mahal, Agra, India India, and the Water You Cannot Take for Granted Delhi, Agra, a river beside a monument, a can of Himalayan spring water promising it “Can Make a Difference,” and the people who made an overwhelming country navigable. SOURCE & STANDARD All About the Water · Part III of III The System I Could Hear Before I Could Understand The first thing Delhi gave me was not water. It was sound. I arrived at the end of a long Asia field study. Singapore first, then B

Rain, rice, coffee, seaweed, safe drinking water, and the fragile systems that shape what the island tastes like. SOURCE & STANDARD | All About the Water, Part II Rain First It was pouring when I arrived at Bambu Indah. Arriving anywhere in a downpour tends to carry a certain low-grade disappointment…the slippery wet flip flops, the immediate sense of having miscalculated. But climbing out of the car onto stone paths slick with rain, the bamboo dark and dripping, the jungle

Singapore, Water, and the Infrastructure You Never See SOURCE & STANDARD All About the Water · Part I of III “I don’t know what happened to all the water. Apparently we drank it.” — Fran Lebowitz WATER FALLING FROM THE CEILING The first thing you notice, if you notice it at all, is that you have to make a choice. Changi Airport deposits you into the terminal in the usual way...customs, baggage, the particular fluorescent calm of an international arrivals hall. You can proce

Photo Credit: Sara Wytrzes Source & Standard — U.S. Regional Series, Part Two Climate, Culture, and the Geography of Flavor From cranberry bogs to lobster traps, New England’s food culture is deeply local — even if most of its food isn’t. Friday Night Beans Every Friday night at my grandmother’s house meant the same dinner: hot dogs (franks) and baked beans. The beans came from a Currier family recipe handed down through multiple generations! I still make them today. Slow-ba

In our last post, a small glass pot of Irish butter — unbranded, humble, from a creamery near the Wild Atlantic Way — stopped us cold. It was better, and we knew it. The question that followed us home: why can’t we find that here? The answer, it turns out, is complicated. And very, very American. The United States Capitol Building, Washington D.C., USA Terroir Isn’t Just for Wine Until recently, I’d never made the connection between the terroir of my food and the terroir of m

“This butter is amazing!” My niece wasn’t wrong. We were sitting at a hotel breakfast table in western Ireland, digging into fresh brown bread with butter from a local creamery I’d never heard of before. It came in a little glass pot — unbranded, humble, probably from the region. But it floored us. A spontaneous, unforgettable moment of taste. The brown bread was dense and hearty, baked in-house or by someone nearby, and toasted just enough to melt that golden slab of butter.