The concept of the tapa has recently made its way into restaurants and cafes across the country, leaving Spanish food lovers with a WTF look on their faces. Tapas play the starring role on the menus of most Spanish restaurants and consist of a common list of traditional Spanish ingredients. Bar hopping is common when tapas are involved, and the practice has even produced its own verb, tapear, which means to travel from bar to bar, sipping and nibbling. Classics such as Reubens and Blats (a...

This is someone's narrow vision of "progress" and "growth"? I had always had a romantic view that I would like to move back to Manhattan sometime, but after visiting this town did not learn any lessons on "gropwth" Commissioner Bob Strawn is proposing nixing the south-end redevelopment and putting the hotel and conference center in the north end. see, I keep moving the napkins around on the table(the napkins representing various businesses and restaurants and condos) but they don't quite...

The Department of Energy has doubled its 2005 commitment to funding research into biofuels any non-petroleum fuel source, including corn, soybean, switchgrass, municipal waste and (ick) used cooking oil. Municipal waste, wood pulp and leftover grain and corn husks are all quite attractive; they can produce something called cellulosic ethanol, which contains more energy than corn. That's why researchers are prospecting for more alternatives, preferably ones that don't rely on food crops or...

BY JILL DOSS-RAINES The Dispatch MIDWAY . When Lynn Griggs stands outside looking at the vast family farm, it's as if he is looking through the eyes of his great-grandfather, Samuel Miller, who purchased the land in the 1850s with his wife, Eliza Burke Miller. BY JILL DOSS-RAINES The Dispatch MIDWAY . When Lynn Griggs stands outside looking at the vast family farm, it's as if he is looking through the eyes of his great-grandfather, Samuel Miller, who purchased the land in the 1850s with...

With indoor commercial storage space hard to come by, Iowa's yellow mountains are growing larger by the day as elevators find a temporary home for 14 million acres of corn. Dean Ohrt, Heartland's grain origination manager for the eastern half of the state, isn't worried that high-priced corn will be sitting outside, uncovered. As long as Mother Nature doesn't play any more tricks on farmers this fall --- like turning cornfields into lakes --- it's a safe bet combines will be rolling on...