Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Buyer Beware

From the University of California Food Blog, a warning about fraud in the olive oil business: “Researchers at UC Davis and in Australia discovered that 69 percent of the imported oils sampled, compared to just 10 percent of the California-produced oils sampled, failed to meet internationally accepted standards for extra virgin olive oil. The imported oils tested were purchased from supermarkets and “big box” stores in three Californi...

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Urine as a Fertilizer

...ilar in cabbages from all three fertilization treatments. Our results show that human urine could be used as a fertilizer for cabbage and does not pose any significant hygienic threats or leave any distinctive flavor in food products. As the study above noted, too much nitrogen (from any source) can cause pest outbreaks. And we do need to be judicious in our urine application in alkaline soils such as here in Los Angeles as urine has a high...

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No garden space? Check this out

...Yesterday Erik and I were walking down the sidewalk, admiring a flat stretch of dry, weedy ground betwixt sidewalk and street, 10 feet across and almost a block long, with perfect East-West sun exposure. We wondered how much food could be grown in that space. Probably enough to put veggies on the table of everyone living in the apartment building fronting that strip....

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Building With Adobe

...he class will be conducted about 12 miles outside of Joshua Tree National Park in Landers, California, some 40 miles from Palm Springs. Joshua Tree and the surrounding area have a wealth of great hiking, climbing, lodging and food options. Directions to the workshop site will be provided to attendees prior to the class. Registration: The cost for the two day workshop is $250/person, a reduced rate of $150/person is offered for full-time students...

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All Politics Are Local

...block, our school district, our city. All politics are local and the good thing about local politics is that you can make a difference. For instance you can: start a community or school garden volunteer to teach gardening or food preservation plant trees build neighborhood resilience and tolerance create bike lanes and walking paths legalize backyard poultry and bees Not that these local goals are necessarily easy, but they can be accomplished....

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Candied Grapefruit Peel

Erik sourced some nice grapefruits from our friend’s tree and used the flesh to do some homework for his Master Food Preserver program. This left a big pile of organic, unwaxed grapefruit rind on our counter, so I decided to do something about it, and set off to make candied grapefruit peel. This is the technique I came up with by mashing together a bunch of different internet recipes and making two batches of the stuff. The results are d...

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Book Review: My Side of the Mountain

...George died this spring at the age of 92.  I wish I’d re-read this book a little sooner, so I could have sent her a letter to say thank-you. * * * An excerpt. Sam’s first day with his baby hawk, Frightful:    The food put the bird to sleep I watched her eyelids close from the bottom up, and her head quiver. The fuzzy body rocked, the tail spread to steady it, and the little duck hawk almost sighed as she sank into the leaves, sleep....

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A Tour of the Homegrown Evolution Compound

...times, our garden looks terrible. It depends on the season, and the amount of time we have to put into it. It looks good now, but in December it looked like crap. We try to plant things that do well in our climate and provide food, medicine or habitat for birds and beneficial insects. But we’ve made plenty of mistakes, and continue to do so. We’re survivalists. Can we live off our yard? No. Can we make a meal with stuff from the yard?...

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Root Simple and Edendale Farm on ABC-7

A local ABC affiliate did a nice, short piece on growing food in the city featuring us and our friend David Kahn of Edendale Farm. I’ll note that David runs a real city farm (he sells eggs) while I call what we do simply gardening, as we don’t grow/raise enough to sell. It’s good to see vegetable gardening and keeping chickens going mainstream–it’s the bright side of the “great recession”....

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