NORTH LIBERTY — In North Liberty five elementary schools can be found within a four-mile radius. Three — Garner, Penn and Van Allen — are all part of the Iowa City school district. Despite their geographical closeness, until this year the three school communities had never worked together on a project benefiting all of their [...]

  It was almost a year ago that Lily Herrmeyer came home from school with some atypical homework — a cabbage plant. Carol Young, Lily’s third grade teacher at West Cedar Elementary in Waverly, and West Cedar’s other third grade teacher have distributed the cabbage plants to their students for years as part of the [...]

  DES MOINES – Kassie Mather wasn’t anxious at the finals of the 2013 Hy-Vee Cake Designer Challenge Wednesday. The same couldn’t be said of her family. Standing near Mather’s work table, watching as she transformed cupcakes, sheet cakes and sugar cookies into popcorn, hot dogs and a rotating carousel, they whispered amongst themselves about her [...]

  Eastern Iowa doughnut lovers had recent cause to celebrate when Dunkin’ Donuts announced plans to open stores in Cedar Rapids and Coralville. Did you know, though, that the company owes its signature menu item — the doughnut — to the son of Jewish immigrants? The concept for mass-produced doughnuts, too, can be traced to [...]

  We’ve all heard it before: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And if there’s a country that does breakfast right, it’s Ireland. The traditional Irish breakfast — sausage, eggs and potatoes served with Irish soda bread or brown bread — was customarily made to fortify individuals for a busy and active [...]

  Steve Pernetti didn’t intend to be a vegetarian. The owner of Iowa City’s Fair Ground Café and Howling Dogs Bakery, Pernetti was a follower of the Atkins diet, which traditionally includes a lot of protein and few carbohydrates. “I was on the other end of the spectrum,” he says. Eventually, he reduced the amount [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Norton family — Mark, Josie and their two boys, Cooper, 5, and Jackson — love a good parade. “We go to parades all summer long, it’s our thing,” Josie Norton says. “I love parades. The boys love the fire trucks and the candy doesn’t hurt, either.” It was at the Great [...]

Take a whiff of the Iowa Capitol cafeteria, and it’s clear plenty of people are ignoring the salad bar and opting for cheeseburgers. Des Moines Sen. Janet Petersen said she’s got nothing against burgers, but wants diners in the state buildings, public universities and community colleges to have healthier choices, as well as have nutritional [...]

“Did you do the vinaigrette?” Shedrie Smith asks one of her teammates, as an adult woman reminds the ladies that they have four minutes left. Smith then bangs a bottle of the dressing on a table, in complete contrast to the quick but delicate way she dispenses the liquid onto beds of leafy greens. It’s [...]

Though few hard statistics are available, Iowans’ appetite for organic food and locally raised fruits and vegetables appears to be growing. “We don’t have real current and accurate data, but my sense is that, yes, we are getting more organic growers and more people raising food for local consumption,” said Maury Wills, bureau chief of [...]