Search Results for: label/food/page/2/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

682 results

Lead Update

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Lead
8 Comments
This week I thought I’d do a series of posts about soil and heavy metals beginning with a few more details about the possible lead contamination situation in our backyard. Two weeks ago Darren Butler, who is teaching a vegetable gardening series at our house, led a class project where we took four samples from different locations in the backyard, mixed them together and sent them off to Wallace Laboratories, a local soil testing lab with...

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Worm Composting

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture
2 Comments
Today’s tip comes from neo-country singer and South Pasadena-by-way-of-Texas resident Corey Travis (web site under development). Corey brings up the topic of worm composting, suggesting a book called “Worms Eat My Garbage” by Mary “Worm Woman” Applehof. Now we haven’t read this book, but having tried worm composting you will definitely need some advice either from the “internets” or from a book. We...

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Return of Recipe Friday! Carrot Soup

Mrs. Homegrown
Food, Recipes
12 Comments
We had a party at our house last week and lots of people brought baby carrots. And no one took their baby carrots home with them when they left. So I took the pile of baby carrots and made a pureed carrot soup with them–one of my all-time favorite soups, in fact. Working with baby carrots was kind of fantastic. No chopping! No peeling! Doing this reminded me that I haven’t shared this recipe on the blog, so I dug up the original re...

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A Lacto Fermentation Kit Made With a Canning Jar

Mr. Homegrown
Fermentation, Food
15 Comments
Chef Ernest Miller gave all of us in the Master Food Preserver class a very clever lacto-fermentation kit he designed and sells at the Farmer’s Kitchen in Hollywood. As a class, we’re all making a batch of sauerkraut. Made out of a Le Parfait canning jar with a hole drilled in the lid to fit a fermentation lock, I already know this handy device will replace the large ceramic crock we have used in the past for pickle and kraut makin...

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Saturday Linkages: Repair is Beautiful

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
RLeave a comment
...map-murals-make-for-excellent-contextual-wall-decor/ … Vintage DIY: Wired Staffers’ Favorite Classic Gear Manuals | Wired Design | http://Wired.com  http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/owners-manuals/ … Thoughtstylings The Tribe of Teenager http://thetanglednest.com/2013/01/the-tribe-of-teenager/ … What your New Year’s Resolutions tell us about the way you think – Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/01/16/what-your-new-years...

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How to Roast Your Own Coffee in a Stovetop Popcorn Maker

Mr. Homegrown
Food, How-to
12 Comments
Thanks to the Institute for Domestic Technology, I learned roast my own coffee at home in a Whirley-Pop Stovetop Popcorn Popper. It’s a simple, if smokey, process. You heat up the popper on your stove top over a medium/high heat and dump in 10 ounces of green coffee beans. The beans we used were ordered from Sweet Maria’s who carry a wide selection of high-end beans at inexpensive prices. The only trick with the Whirley-Po...

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Mallow (Malva parviflora) an Edible Friend

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
18 Comments
In late February, towards the end of our winter rains, it’s high weed season here in Los Angeles–folks in other parts of the country will have to wait a few more months. We await this season with anticipation, since it’s the best time of year to forage for wild edible weeds. We’ll highlight a few of these edible weeds in the next few months beginning today with Mallow (Malva parviflora also known as cheeseweed because the...

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Chicken Nipple Waterering Systems

Mr. Homegrown
Chickens
12 Comments
A question came in this week from a reader who has tried our deep bedding suggestion but is having trouble keeping the chicken waterer clean as a result. Chickens are certainly expert at fouling (fowling?) their water source. Which is why many people use nipple waterers like the one above. Chickens learn to use them quickly (they like to peck at things, after all). I’ve seen two DIY options: the simplest is a suspended five gallon bucket...

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Rooftop Garden Classes

Homegrown Neighbor
Events, Rooftop Gardening, Self Watering Containers
3 Comments
Homegrown Neighbor here: Los Angeles has sprouted a very cool rooftop garden. Here where January temperatures are often in the 70̸2;s, buildings aren’t designed to hold snow, meaning that our roofs usually can’t hold much weight. So rooftop gardens are rare. But on the border of Little Tokyo, skid row, and a warehouse district, an old seafood warehouse rooftop has been turned into a gourmet garden atop the home of artisan food p...

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Farming: One way to try and save Detroit – Dec. 29, 2009

Homegrown Neighbor
Urban Farming
19 Comments
Homegrown Neighbor here: I thought this article was really interesting. Can growing food in declining cities make them places people want to live again? Maybe the Homegrown Evolution team needs to pick up and buy a compound in Detroit. I guess we could do a lot of farming in the city. Land is cheap and abundant. But it sounds cold and we are weak in the face of temperatures below 50 degrees. Farming: One way to try and save Detroit – Dec....

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