Saturday Linkages: A Mega-Reference for Homesteaders

...oes pneumatic http://hackaday.com/2013/09/13/tooth-fairy-goes-pneumatic/ … Making Nikola Tesla a Saint Makes Us All Dumber http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/making-nikola-tesla-a-saint-makes-us-all-dumber-1308034624 … Let’s really make backyard hens legal in Pasadena CA! http://www.change.org/petitions/let-s-really-make-backyard-hens-legal-in-pasadena-ca?share_id=QwPdcnLXHr&utm_campaign=twitter_link_action_box&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_peti...

Read…

Ghee for the skin

...he way it feels. More will follow, I am sure. I’m going to experiment with making body butter and lip balm with it. Do any of you use ghee for medicine or skin care? (Also, I’ll be making my own ghee soon, and will post on that, but in the meantime, there are loads of recipes for it out there. It’s basically just boiled butter–anybody can make it. You can also find it ghee in many “regular” super markets these days, as well as in health food store...

Read…

Kevin West’s Saving the Season

...h. Full disclosure here: I’ve tasted a lot of West’s jams. I teach a bread making class at the Institute of Domestic Technology. After my bread demo West does a jam making session and I stick around to watch and, hopefully, filtch an extra jar. Those West jams are coveted items around the Root Simple household. What makes Saving the Season different from other preserving books is West’s masterful use of aromatics and alcohols. As he explains in th...

Read…

Meet our book & web designer: Roman Jaster

Roman Jaster is the gifted designer who designed both Making It and this very website for us. He recently gave a Visiting Designer talk about his work at his alma mater, CalArts and made that lecture public on YouTube. In it, he talks about his childhood in East Germany, the decisions he made early-on which determined his career, his working methods (which are really interesting, combining coding with design) and talks about the concepts behind s...

Read…

Choosing the Perfect Tortilla Press

...2 inch press as small tortillas are used in authentic Mexican street food. Making corn tortillas is much simpler than I expected. All you do is get masa harina (a limed corn flour), mix it roughly 50/50 with water and let the dough rest for a half hour to an hour. Next, you roll the masa into little 2 inch balls and press them between a plastic bag inserted into the tortilla press. The last step is to heat them on the stove for one minute on each...

Read…