Thomas Pynchon on Pizza

...a cough remedy, the rennetless cheese reminded customers variously of bottled hollandaise or joint compound, and the options were all vegetables rigorously organic, whose high water content saturated, long before it baked through, a stone-ground twelve-grain crust with the lightness and digestibility of a manhole cover. Pynchon being Pynchon, pizza appears frequently in his novels as a multi-valiant symbol. In Vineland it’s a symbol of the Dharma...

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When You Can’t Stop Bringing Up Fungi in Casual Conversations

...Psylocybe Fanaticus, that makes use of sterilized mason jars to inoculate grain. McPherson’s method, which he calls PF Tek, allows you to propagate fungi in your kitchen without a lot of expensive lab equipment. You do need a pressure canner which I’m lobbying the administration here at Root Simple to let me order. Odds are there’s a mycological society near you. While it’s interesting to grow mushrooms and forage for edible species it’s also jus...

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The Jerusalem Cookbook

...eat and fish recipes, but it also has plenty of salad, vegetable, bean and grain recipes, so it’s friendly to both vegetarians and meat eaters. We’re mostly vegetarian, and we feel like we’ve only scratched the surface of the meatless offerings so far. Though there are a lot of veg recipes which use eggs, yogurt and cheese, there are also good vegan-friendly offerings. To give you a feel for the book, these are the recipes we’ve enjoyed so far. Al...

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Saturday Tweets: Scary Gelatins and Flesh Eating Screwworms

...o/fqP3o3WKbz via @2020science — Root Simple (@rootsimple) October 22, 2016 Grain silo #tinyhouse: https://t.co/FJTmlo9hZ9 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) October 22, 2016 A Black Mirror episode that depicts a society where everyone gets around in rolling metal boxes but 40,000 people die in horrific crashes. — Bicycle Lobby (@BicycleLobby) October 21, 2016 Bike lock developed that makes thieves immediately vomit https://t.co/IsXwBzKSo5 — Root Simple (...

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Injera

..., whole wheat flour, water, salt and teff flour. Teff is an extremely fine grain grown in Africa. It’s so tiny in fact that a handful of seeds is enough to plant a small farm. Teff is grown in the US by the Teff Company of Caldwell Idaho and is available (though somewhat expensive) at Whole Foods via Bob’s Red Mill. The teff growing folks claim that the iron from teff is more easily absorbed by the body, and that it also includes high levels of ca...

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