Editor’s Note: We welcome Jane Ward back to the FictionalCafé ‘zine pages with a new short story. Her first, “Balancing Act,” appeared in the June, 2014 issue. “It’s not like that,” she said. They were sitting on the steps of the old house where Raynor had grown up, looking out at the moss-covered rocks on the front lawn, and trying to get the bottle caps to land on top of the biggest rock the way they had done when they were children.

Like any good idea, City Feed and Supply started with an isolated event followed by someone wondering, “What if?”. The event in this case was the closing of a convenience store in Jamaica Plain’s Stony Brook neighborhood in the late 1990’s. Local resident Kristine Cortese wondered what if there was a convenience store that sold healthy food instead of just junk?

Earlier this month, Slate's Andrew Simmons published a "food festival takedown" claiming that "These modern-day bacchanals showcase the worst features of American life." Slate went so far as to give the article the provacative click-bait header "Why You Should Never, Ever Go to a Food Festival." Andrew, I would like to cordially invite you to come to next year's Boston Local Food Festival.

Looking to make your home energy use more efficient? Look no further than Renew Boston’s Solarize workshop this Wednesday in Hyde Park. Renew Boston was created by Mayor Menino in 2009 as a way to save energy and create green jobs. The organization is made up of both non-profit and for-profit energy efficiency teams and alternative energy providers.

A great way to learn about local businesses that are going green is to attend the Sustainable Business Network's Boston Local Food Festival , held every September. And a great way to make sure that this event has the funding it needs to keep happening is to attend the Local Craft Brewfest on the waterfront .

Congratulations to Ketki on winning four boxes of cereal from Attune Foods in last week's giveaway ! And so many thanks to everyone who participated, as well as Attune for providing its awesome products. I had been thinking about maybe someday trying to figure out how to do a giveaway for a long time, and the positive response to this one was a huge milestone for this little blog.

In an unassuming neighborhood in Somerville not far from Porter Square lie the Miller Street Studios, a group of art spaces sharing a building and, this weekend, celebrating the biannual Miller Street Open Studios , where work is on display and, in some cases, for sale. Dozens of artists are allowing the public a peek not only at finished pieces, but at works in progress, raw materials and other insightful aspects of the world where the art is made.

The casual polling I've done to find out what people just aren't willing to go without during Corn-Free July has yielded an almost unanimous response of tortillas or tortilla chips. After searching all the usual hook-ups for minimally processed ingredients to no avail, I realized I'd have to try to make them myself.

Have you ever sat eating one of those frozen single-serving dinners and thought to yourself, "Wow I'm glad I didn't have to deal with this meat when it was raw. That would have been gross?" For all the preaching I do about the importance of understanding where your food comes from...well...I don't really understand where my food comes from.