I Ate 100 Power Bars

March 12, 2018

...ropriated as the latest buzz-phrase by large food companies. Every natural food product is labeled either “pro-biotic” or “pre-biotic.” If one could distill all those booths down to one item you’d end up with a pro-biotic turmeric, kimchi, kombucha, paleo sports bar grown “regeneratively,” whatever that means. But I’m getting cranky again. On a more positive note I met a nice Root Simple reader who works for Q Drinks, an Oakland, California based...

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Composting: Nothing is Wasted

Mrs. Homegrown

May 7, 2015

Back to the Garden, Composting, Gardening

23 Comments

...ting for Newell Rubbermaid Inc.’s Rubbermaid consumer line, which includes food storage containers. “Consumers have the feeling of not being competent…” (WSJ, April 22, 2015, D1) Despite our guilt, according the WSJ, we’re wasting more food all the time. We’re wasting three times more than we wasted in 1960. That makes sense in lots of ways, including the advent of all these super-sized retailers with their perverse economies of scale inducing us...

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Looking for the Union Label

Mr. Homegrown

September 12, 2007

Domesticus

3 Comments

...d a highly catchy ad jingle from the roller disco era, “Look for the Union Label” (youngsters can watch it on youtube here). We looked for the union label and we were surprised to find it via a company called Union House which carries a functional, if unexciting line of apparel. Unless hipsters take to golf shirts in an ironic fashion judo move, these offerings will never be cool like the domestically made clothes made by the union busting folks o...

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Making Beer in Plain Language

Mr. Homegrown

December 14, 2008

Beer, Fermentation, Food

13 Comments

...via the Bad Writing Contest Huh? At least the terminology surrounding beer making ain’t that obtuse, but it certainly could use some simplification. For novice home brewers, such as us here at Homegrown Evolution, the terminology creates an unnecessary barrier as impenetrable as a graduate school seminar in the humanities. Let’s see, there’s a mash, a mash tun, a wort, some sparging, malting, all the while specific gravities are measured and hopsi...

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Making Tofu From Scratch at the Institute of Domestic Technology

Mr. Homegrown

June 9, 2014

Food, Food Preservation

6 Comments

...coffee roasting, bacon curing, bread baking, jam and exotic projects like making your own nocino and toothpaste. One of the perks of teaching at the IDT is getting to sit in on some of the other classes. The coffee roasting class changed my life. Now, every morning, I look forward to fresh coffee I roasted myself in a Whirley-Pop Popcorn maker. This past weekend I sat in a new IDT class taught by author Andrea Nguyen on how to make tofu from scra...

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