Furnas, in the Portuguese Azores Islands, is a steam bath of a town. Here the water is hot enough to boil tea and simmer stew. What does treating these underground hot springs like an oven or a crockpot say about the relationship between ingredients and energy and being ecological? Between recipes and the earth?

Writing “Stew of the Earth” for the sixth issue of Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review was (almost) as fun as running my fingers through steaming hot water, boiled directly in the earth. Many thanks to my former colleague Pauline Kargruber for so thoughtfully shepherding this essay.