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Instead of bok choy, one woman opts for a weedy plant called amaranth. In fact, she has an entire list of edible weeds. Gaye Chan is into what’s known as urban foraging. The University of Hawaii at Manoa professor picks plants we see as unsightly weeds and adds them to her daily diet. “I started doing research on it and realized the things I had been yanking out for years, cursing them, are actually edible and delicious,” she said. Instead of bok choy, Chan opts for the weedy plant called amaranth. In fact, she has an entire list of edible...

Chefs and home cooks alike are renewing their passion for humanity’s oldest culinary pursuit.Danny Childs is offering pawpaws to a surprised couple in a park on an early afternoon in suburban New Jersey. "They're like a mix between a banana and a mango," he explains. "You just rip the skin open and eat the flesh." He demonstrates how by slurping the tender insides and handing each person one of the peanut-shaped fruits from his basket. They take them, dubious at first, their hesitancy quickly melting away as they take a taste, emboldened by his enthusiasm. Childs is used to this...

Writing in the Journal of Ethnobiology, Natalie Muellert, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences, describes how she painstakingly grew and calculated yield estimates for two annual plants that were cultivated in eastern North America for thousands of years—and then abandoned. Growing goosefoot (Chenopodium, sp.) and erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum) together is more productive than growing either one alone, Mueller discovered. Planted in tandem, along with the other known lost crops, they could have fed thousands. Archaeologists found the first evidence of the lost crops in rock shelters in Kentucky and Arkansas in the 1930s. Seed caches and dried...

Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as a credibly nutritious substitute for meat. Unusual among...

AMARANTH Advisors, the $US9.2 billion hedge fund that lost $US6.5 billion ($8.7 billion) in less than a month, is preparing to shut down. Nicholas Maounis, its founder, sent a letter to investors last night informing them that the fund was suspending all redemptions for September 30 and October 31, "to enable the Amaranth funds to generate liquidity for investors in an orderly fashion, with the goal of maximising the proceeds of asset dispositions". Investors have been meeting Amaranth executives throughout last week, many demanding the return of their money.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Amaranth Advisors LLC Founder Nick Maounis told investors in a conference call on Friday how markets turned against the hedge fund in September, leaving it no choice but to sell its entire energy portfolio to other firms at a huge loss. Maounis said that "highly unusual market behavior," not just the usual price moves, virtually eliminated the firm's access to liquidity. "We did not expect that the market would move so aggressively against our positions," he explained. The fund lost $560 million on its natural gas trades on Sept. 14, he noted.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Losses of more than $3 billion suffered by Amaranth Advisors LLC this month may not just hit the wealthy individuals and big Wall Street institutions that have historically invested in hedge funds. Pensioners and state workers could also feel the effects. Amaranth could suffer year-to-date losses of 35% after natural gas trades went awry, founder Nicholas Maounis said in a letter to investors that was obtained by MarketWatch on Monday. The Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, which had almost $10 billion in assets earlier this year, counted at least one public pension fund among its investors. The...

Amaranth Advisors, a big U.S. hedge fund, has told its investors to brace for huge losses as a result of its costly bet that natural gas prices — now at a two-year low — would rise. Some reports said the fund's losses could amount to $4 billion US."We anticipate our year-to-date losses might be in excess of 35 per cent as we near completion of the disposition of our natural gas exposure," the hedge fund said in a letter to investors obtained by several media organizations. Amaranth traders apparently placed hugely leveraged bets that natural gas prices would rise. Instead,...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Natural-gas futures fell Thursday, sending the October contract to its lowest level in two-and-a-half years after a U.S. government report showed that supplies of the fuel were at a more than comfortable level -- 13% above a year ago. At the same time, crude futures rose in a move to recover part of the loss posted a day earlier after data showed U.S. supplies of petroleum products at ample levels. Natural gas for October delivery fell by 14.1 cents to $4.79 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange after reaching a low...

EAST HADDAM -- Around town - and as far away as Tennessee - people are wondering why federal agents seized datashak plants and seeds and 19 computer discs from a Muslim campground in Moodus. First Selectman Brad Parker said Friday's raid on the 18-acre Town Street campground, owned by Darul Uloom Shady Brook Inc., has the town abuzz. FBI agents and officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted the raid. "Out on the street, people don't think that [the federal government] would go to that effort for a spinach plant," Parker said. A Tennessee-based blog called "Ginny's Thoughts and...