Front Yard Vegetable Garden Update

One advantage of living in a slightly rough-around-the-edges Los Angeles neighborhood is that nobody gets bent out of shape about front yard vegetable gardens. Indeed, they are  a tradition in immigrant neighborhoods. The picture above is an update of one of the front yard gardens Kelly blogged about back in May. It looked like this when she first blogged about it. Not sure exactly what’s growing here. It looks like beans from a distanc...

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Oatmeal: It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

(we’ve really gotta get us a live-in food photographer) Mrs. Homegrown Here: Okay, this is one is a little weird.  I’ll tell you right off that Erik won’t eat this stuff (it just seems wrong to him), but I love it. I’m exploring the world of savory oatmeal. I’m sure there are savory oatmeal recipes on the web, but I haven’t looked because I’m enjoying working without a map. What I’m doing...

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Our Favorite Searches

Homegrown Revolution occasionally gets a laugh reviewing the search phrases that land people on this blog. At times the phrases resemble a kind of random internet haiku. We thought we’d review a few of them and respond. “is Roundup bad for cats” YES! Roundup, Monsanto’s ubiquitous herbicide, is bad for all living things . “how to survive living out of your car” We’d suggest a subscription to Dwelling Portabl...

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Tree Tobacco as a Stinging Nettle Cure

Tree tobacco or Nicotiana glauca. Image from Wikipedia. Yesterday’s Solanum nigrum (Black Nightshade) post reminded me of a fascinating tidbit about another plant from the nightshade family that I learned from foraging expert Pascal Baudar: the leaves of tree tobacco (Nicotiana glauca) ease stinging nettle rash. We were out gathering nettles with Pascal, so the lesson was much appreciated–and field tested. All you have to d...

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Our favorite way to cook zucchini

It’s that time of year again. Put aside those zucchini bread recipes and try this instead. This recipe–or technique, rather– sounds too simple to be good, but it really works. As one friend said of the dish, “It tastes like there’s a lot going on, but there’s not.” All you’ve got to do is shred your zucchini up on the large holes of your kitchen grater. Saute the shreds in an uncovered s...

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Nuts!

As of fall 2007 truly raw almonds will no longer be available in the US or Canada, because the USDA, FDA, and the California Almond Board has released a marketing order that all almonds be pasteurized. This is due to two recent salmonella outbreaks, the cause of which, in Homegrown Revolution ‘s opinion, is the usual poor factory farming practices. But it gets worse, according to the folks at the Weston A. Price foundation, There is an eve...

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A New Source of Fuel

Homegrown Revolution comrades, the Yes Men have pulled off a rather nice stunt: June 14, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITSConference organizer fails to have Yes Men arrested Text of speech, photos, video: http://www.vivoleum.com/ GO-EXPO statement: http://newswire.ca/ Contact: [email protected] More links at end of release. Imposters posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council...

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How Not To Bake Bread

Homegrown Neighbor here: So Mr. and Mrs. Homegrown are away on book tour while I’m holding down the fort in L.A. and looking after their chickens. I figured that while they are away and not blogging much, I can step in and entertain you with tales of my epic baking failures. Sure, lots of blogs have pretty pictures of food and neatly typed recipes, but everyone likes a good tale of failure now and then. Now, my neighbor Erik, aka Mr. Home...

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Make Mag

Readers of this blog will really enjoy the current issue of Make Magazine. “Volume 18: ReMake America! These challenging times have presented us with a rare chance to try out new ways of doing things. The opportunities for makers are terrific — we can start at home to remake manufacturing, education, food production, transportation, and recreation. In MAKE Volume 18 you’ll learn how to make an automatic garden, heat your water with t...

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