A Prickly Harvest

...ood folks at Process Media will be releasing our book The Urban Homesteader. While we’ve been negligent in some of the small scale agricultural duties we profile in the book, at least we have our prickly pear cactus to keep us in fruit this summer. And due to the unusual quantity of fruit our prickly pear has gifted us with we’re experimenting with making jelly to deal with the abundance. We’ll share the recipe and other prickly stories this comin...

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Foodcrafting 101

...to recreate everything at home. Foodcrafting 101 Workshop Schedule: Bread Making: Master the simple technique of bread making from scratch using the no-knead bread recipe from the Institute Director’s own cookbook. Learn about types of flour, where to purchase them, how to shape loaves and achieve the perfect crust. You’ll learn how to recreate a professional bread baker’s oven at home and produce loaves that rival accomplished bakers. Cheese Mak...

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Making Tofu From Scratch at the Institute of Domestic Technology

...ts brought some dehydrated crackers to class. He makes them with discarded fruit pulp that he gets at a local juice bar. He dehydrates the pulp with some soaked sunflower seeds. The result is delicious. It’s a clever idea. Back to the tofu. I’m going to try making my own this summer. At the very least I can make my own soy milk and skip the sugary stuff I’ve been using. You can get organic non-GMO soybeans and coagulant online at www.laurasoybeans...

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A Homemade Mattress?

...the wool. It took her about 6 hours to fill the mattress. 3) Here is a webpage, in French, showing the mattress making process. Lots of useful pictures. I have to run it through Google Translate for more clues. 4) Do not fall for the eHow result if you search for how to make a wool mattress. It gets off to a great start by recommending you use glue, rather than stitching, to construct your mattress tick . (They call the tick a “fabric sheet pouch...

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