038 The Ground Rules with Nance Klehm

...ts that waste and then uses the resulting compost along with mushrooms and plants to bioremediate damaged urban soils. Nance describes The Ground Rules as “re-imagining waste and biological infrastructures.” You can find out more about the project on the Social Ecologies website and on Nance’s personal website. There’s also a video about The Ground Rules. If you’re in Chicago you can visit Nance and Emmanual Pratt’s exhibition, For the Common Good...

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109 Doubt is Our Product: Bees, Chemicals and Academia

...egislation that would have required labeling neonicotinoid treated nursery plants? These are just a few of the controversial questions covered in this week’s episode of the podcast. My guests are Stacy Malkan co-director of US Right to Know and beekeeper Terry Oxford of Urban Bee San Francisco. Links: Follow the Honey: 7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits “Scientists Loved and Loathed” by Danny Hakim 38th Annua...

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Something for Nothing – Wild Mustard Greens

...ground into a powder and used as a food flavouring, it is the ‘white mustard’ of commerce . . . The pungency of mustard develops when cold water is added to the ground-up seed – an enzyme (myrosin) acts on a glycoside (sinigrin) to produce a sulphur compound. The reaction takes 10 – 15 minutes. Mixing with hot water or vinegar, or adding salt, inhibits the enzyme and produces a mild bitter mustard.” And speaking of urban foraging, we’ve been insp...

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An Echo Park Weed Salad

There’s nothing like a little urban blight to produce an excellent salad. While not impoverished (not unless you consider dilapidated $600,000 bungalows a sign of destitution), our neighborhood ain’t exactly Beverly Hills, meaning that in terms of landscaping it’s a little rough around the edges. And the edges–parkways, cracks in the asphalt, neglected plantings were, on this warm February day, overflowing with weeds. Edible weeds. We explored th...

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094 The American Woman’s Home

...vers a great deal of territory, everything from indoor air quality to houseplants, to childcare to housing the homeless. The book is in line with her family’s activism on issues such as women’s education, temperance and the abolition of slavery. We discuss many of Catherine’s specific recommendations including: butter, bread, terrariums, indoor plants, earth closets and art (she suggests everyone own a print of Eastman Johnson’s “Barefoot Boy” and...

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