Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Spring is in full flower - I know this, because I am sneezing continually - and in addition to the burgeoning boughs and all come asparagus, snap peas, watercress, spinach, artichokes, you name it. Basically, everything’s gone green.

With that, if you’re a wine lover, there’s also the question: What wines go best with green vegetables?
 
The truth is, in a lot of cases, don’t worry: The specific vegetable doesn’t matter so much as how you’re cooking it. For instance, broccoli in cheese sauce is a lot richer and more substantial than steamed broccoli with a squeeze of lemon; ditto a salad with a creamy Roquefort dressing versus one with a splash of balsamic vinegar and oil.

In general, for richer dishes, choose more substantial wines (Rhône whites, Chardonnays, Viogniers); for lighter dishes, lighter wines (Pinot Grigio, Vinho Verde and dry Rieslings are good possibilities).
 
Another broadly applicable rule is that acidity likes acidity. In other words, if you have a tart vinaigrette on a salad, choose a tart wine (Sauvignon Blanc, Albariño, Muscadet) to go with it. Food flavors tend to dominate wine flavors rather than vice versa - it’s like Fifty Shades of Grey for your tongue - so a vinaigrette or sharply lemony sauce will obliterate something like a soft, rich Chardonnay.
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This is the fifth installment of "Eat This List" - a regularly recurring list of things chefs, farmers, writers and other food experts think you ought to know about.

A recent study by the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers revealed that 30–50% or 1.2-2 billion metric tonnes (that's about 2.6-4.4 trillion pounds for those of us not on the metric system) of all food produced on the planet is lost before reaching a human stomach. There are plenty of factors at play - including large portions of edible crops being rejected because they're not physically attractive enough, problems in the supply chain and inefficient harvesting - but perhaps it's time to consider that your own kitchen might be part of the problem.

The next time you're heading out on a grocery run, try one or more of these simple tricks for minimizing food waste. Not only will they help you do your part to take it easy on the environment, but you may even save a few bucks in the bargain.
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Nearly two weeks into the year, most people's shiny, new resolutions have lost their luster. It's easy to slide back into comfortable old habits, routines and ruts, but we're here to combat that with a little personal challenge.

In my list of food resolutions for 2013, I suggested a monthly "Food Adventure Day," experimenting with an in-season ingredient you've never used before. They won't all be winners, but chances are that you'll end the year with at least a few new fruits or vegetables in the rotation.

As I wandered through Fei Long market in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, last week, stocking up on my usual baby bok choy, lotus root and taro, it occurred to me that while I've eaten countless bowls of take-out Chinese broccoli, I'd never actually cooked it at home. Into the basket it went.
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While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Can you smell the excitement stirring? January is National Soup Month.

The cold weather that seems to grip most of the country at this time of year has a way of seeping into your bones to the point where nothing seems to help. And as the winter months wear on, and resolutions are made and broken, it gets harder and harder to find something that’s both warm and nutritious and easy to make. Fear not! I have the perfect solution: soup.
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Stacy Cowley is CNNMoney's tech editor. She's in a complicated relationship with her CSA and explores the odd vegetables that show up in her haul in CSI: CSA. Previously, she fell in love with the weirdness of kohlrabi. 

I have a zucchini the size of a baseball bat lurking on my fridge’s bottom shelf. It has a pack of cousins jammed into the veggie drawer, and my freezer is stuffed with roughly seventeen zillion pounds of squash creations.

It’s the problem every CSA subscriber or veggie gardener faces all summer long: The zucchini explosion.

These things are the rabbits of the plant world. During a long, dry July stretch when practically nothing else was coming up at my CSA’s farm, the zucchini merrily ran rampant. We got massive hauls of it each week; the leftover squash took to leaping off the vines and accosting those who wandered past. I’ve known home gardeners who become like drug pushers: “Oh, you have to take some of my zucchini home with you! No really, take some damn zucchini.”
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Vegetarians are (mostly) not here just to ruin your good time. Really. I swear. I was one, myself for seven years and all I wanted at a cookout was to hang out with my friends, and not have to worry that the omnivores would gobble up all the meat-free sides before I got to the table.

These days, while I'm likely to smoke up a brisket, a rack of ribs or some animal innards when company comes over, the non-meat options surely don't get short shrift.

Here are a few of my favorite ways to celebrate the bounty of the season and make sure all my guests leave full and satisfied - no matter how they choose to chow down.
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World-renowned chef, author and Emmy winning television personality Anthony Bourdain visits Colombia in the next episode of "Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown," airing Sunday, April 28, at 9 p.m. ET. Follow the show on Twitter and Facebook.

In the days counting down to my trip to Colombia, I daydreamed about the culinary delights to come. It was my first time traveling to South America and nothing excited me more than the food: exotic fruits fresh off the tree, full-bodied coffee from the richest beans in the world, and succulent steaks in a country known for its beef production.

I traveled with my boyfriend, who was born in Pereira, one of the three main cities making up Colombia’s “coffee axis.” I begged him to give me an idea of what to expect on my plate. In the past, he had regaled me with stories of eating cow’s tongue for Christmas dinner and drinking juice from tropical citrus fruits whose names I could hardly pronounce. What foods would I be bragging about when I arrived back home to the States?

“Well,” he said, thinking a moment. He shrugged. “Colombia is pretty famous for its potatoes.”
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Stacy Cowley is CNNMoney's tech editor. She's in a complicated relationship with her CSA and explores the odd vegetables that show up in her haul in CSI: CSA. Previously, she battled amaranth greens.

“I’m not going to eat the purslane,” my friend Amy announced as we collected our CSA shares. “I grew up weeding that ^%$#.”

My CSA often coughs up veggies and greens you don’t usually see in the supermarket, but until Amy foisted her purslane share on me, I hadn’t realized the haul would include actual weeds.

Amy, who comes from rural Colorado, says she used to spend hours each week as a kid hunting down purslane shoots and fighting their attempts to take over her family’s vegetable patch. The USDA classifies it as “invasive and noxious.” Google its official name, “portulaca oleracea,” and you’ll get a long list of advice on killing it; Google “purslane” and you get tips for cooking it.
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Stacy Cowley is CNNMoney's tech editor. She's in a complicated relationship with her CSA and explores the odd vegetables that show up in her haul in CSI: CSA. This is the first installment

It’s CSA season. That means that like thousands of other community supported agriculture subscribers, I’m locked in a five-month death battle with my fridge’s veggie drawer.

It’s week three of my CSA, and right now, the fridge is winning. I’ve got the inevitable kohlrabi lurking in the crisper, plotting a coup with the half-dozen turnips I’ve had lingering in there since April. The leafy greens are forming factions. I’ve been adding “spring salad mix” to every meal I possibly can, since it turns to sludge after a week, but that means neglecting the kale, arugula and mizuna. I’m pretty sure they’re spawning. Every time I open the drawer, the mizuna supply has tripled.

It’s not all grim, of course. I actually love CSA season and look forward to our first mid-June delivery the way six-year-old me anticipated Christmas morning: Finally, after months and months of waiting, the goodies arrive!
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

When it comes to vegetables, asparagus is a strange one. First off, it can grow up to seven inches per day in good weather, which means we should be glad farmers harvest it, or else asparagus would soon take over the world. Second, well, as Pierre Larousse put it in his Grand Dictionnaire Universel, “Tout le monde connaı̂t l'odeur fétide qu'elle communique àl'urine.” You don’t have to speak French to know what he’s talking about. And third, asparagus messes with wine.
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