Search Results for: label/lead/page/8/2011/04/making-it

397 results

How to Make Soba Noodles

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Recipes
11 Comments
Last month I took an amazing class with author and chef Sonoko Sakai on how to make soba noodles by hand. She’s a great teacher and I managed to make a halfway decent couple of servings of noodles during the class. Like many Japanese arts, soba making has a series of very precise steps. The recipe itself is simple (just buckwheat flour and water), though you do have to pay close attention to the temperature and humidity in the room. Whil...

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A Homemade Mattress?

Mrs. Homegrown
Design, Domesticus, Miscellaneous
62 Comments
The Princess and the Pea by Edmund Dulac This is the story of my life. I read about some old domestic technology or product that makes a lot of sense. Perhaps it is obsolete. Or perhaps it is only done/made in more enlightened countries. Nonetheless, I want it. So I have to make from scratch. Yesterday we met a great couple, Renae and Dimitri. Renae mentioned she was thinking about making her own mattress. I was intrigued because just that morni...

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Bar Codes on Veggies

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
6 Comments
...n the QR code on the label. The code links to a mobile website detailing origin, soil composition, organic fertilizer content percentage (as opposed to chemical), use of pesticides and herbicides and even the name of the farm it was grown on. Consumers can also access the same information over the Ibaraki Agricultural Produce Net website by inputting a numbered code on each label.” Though we’re not Luddites, we have mixed feelings abo...

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Adventures in Gardening Series: Wrap up on the Hippie Heart: Growing lentils and flax

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
10 Comments
The Hippie Heart got a crew cut We’re clearing out our cool season crops for the warm season ones, so it’s time for some reporting on the new beds we’ve been profiling under the “Advances in Gardening” series. We’ll start with the Hippie Heart. The Hippie Heart is a heart-shaped bed where I was intending to experiment with planting seeds straight out of the pantry, ill-advised as that might seem,...

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More on our gardening disasters

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Mistakes, Thoughtstylings
15 Comments
We need to put the heart back into our garden. (Our Heart of Flax from way back in 2011) I thought I’d chime in on the subject of this year’s garden failures. Before I do, I’d like to thank you all for your kind advice and commiseration that you left on Erik’s post. First, I will agree that it really, truly has been a terrible year in the garden. Sometimes Erik gets a little melodramatic when it comes to the crop failure...

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World’s Largest Chard Grows in SIP

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Self Watering Containers
12 Comments
The story of SuperChard: Its origin is unknown. It might come from Bountiful Garden seed, or perhaps Franchi. It volunteered in a corner of one of our backyard beds, in a bed we were resting. We didn’t water it. It grew all summer long anyway, despite having no rain at all.  In fact, it grew huge and lush. We never harvested it, though, because it was growing in our lead contaminated soil. So we continued to ignore it and it continued to...

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Urban Homesteading

Mrs. Homegrown
Urban Homestead Trademark Dispute
66 Comments
ed by their actions, but we can only speak for ourselves. We want to take this moment to tell you how grateful for all the the kind and super-supportive comments, emails and conversations we’ve had over this last week. It’s hard to describe, but we’ve received so much love from you all that it’s been like being bundled in a warm blanket. We’ve been busy, and we’ve been taking this seriously, but we haven&#82...

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Press

...m in the heart of Los Angeles. They are the keepers of the popular DIY blog, Root Simple, and the authors of The Urban Homestead (2008), which the New York Times calls “…the contemporary bible on the subject” and Making It (2011) a project book for post-consumer society. In addition to their writing and blogging, Kelly and Erik teach and speak on the topics of self-reliance, urban gardening and sustainability. Other Info: Contact us: roots...

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Our New Earth Oven and How We Built It

Mr. Homegrown
Appropriate Technology, Design, Water and Power
5 Comments
The almost completed horno–waiting for its final plaster coat in a few weeks. Kurt Gardella and Ben Loescher taught an amazing earth oven workshop at our house this weekend. Keep your eye out for classes these guys offer if you are interested in earth ovens, adobe houses or earth plasters and finishes. Contact information is below. Here I thought I’d briefly describe the process with a few pictures. One of the nice things ab...

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A New Fitness Craze: The Kayak Balance Stool

Mr. Homegrown
Fitness
9 Comments
Today I canceled my YMCA membership and started to put together my own home gym. Bored with the usual gym accouterments, I’ve set out to build some fitness equipment on my own starting with a kayak balance stool. I discovered this idea in Christopher Cunningham’s book Building the Greenland Kayak. To make your kayak balance stool, find a piece of scrap wood. I used a 2 x 8 and cut it to fit my ass to toe dimensions. Cut two end bo...

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