Search Results for: label/peak oil

127 results

Return of Bean Friday: Bean Broth or “Tuscan Crazy Water”

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, Recipes, Reviews
5 Comments
...water means you don’t have to worry about sticking or burning. At the very end, add salt and pepper. Strain the broth from the beans. She notes that the Tuscans dress these beans at the table using salt, pepper, olive oil and maybe vinegar.  I tried it, and it’s fine. Solid. Not super exciting, but healthy and hearty. I served the beans over rice with some of the broth. Another possibility, maybe a better possibility, would be to re...

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A tasty Italian chard: Bieta Verde da Taglio

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
2 Comments
...ng chard”. Verde da Taglio has thin stems and thick leaves. It ain’t as pretty as the rainbow colored chards we are also growing, but it tastes better, in my opinion. Steam it, fry it up with some garlic and olive oil and you’re set. Verde da Taglio is sold by the Franchi company, which I have a brand allegiance to as fanatical as the worst Apple computer partisan. Is Franchi the new Apple? I predict we’ll see folks tossin...

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A Sports Utility Bicycle

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes
RLeave a comment
...elf-sufficiency. Cars simply demand too much: repairs, insurance, gas, licenses, registration, smog checks, not to mention the terrible toll they take on our environment and the need to fight wars to maintain our addiction to oil. When you ride a bike you are profoundly free, liberated from the demand our culture makes on us to own a personal automobile, a machine that may be the downfall of our once independent nation. Kipchoge Spencer, presiden...

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3 things to do with citrus peels

Mrs. Homegrown
Cleaning, Domesticus, Food, Food Preservation, How-to
11 Comments
...g vinegar with cleansing/disinfecting herbs, like lavender or sage, is something I’ve known about for a long time, but don’t do, in practice. I’m too lazy. Instead, I scent my cleaning vinegar with essential oil. But we always have citrus peels laying around in piles, and the simplicity of the citrus idea is so a peeling that I had to try it. (ouch! stop throwing things!) I filled one jar with orange peels and covered it with vi...

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Slaughtering Turkeys for Thanksgiving

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Food
25 Comments
...he bile sack. This has to be removed and discarded carefully–you don’t want to spill bile on the meat. Here’s one of four big fat livers Steve collected. We tossed them in a bowl and coated them with olive oil to help keep them fresh: Our last step outdoors was chopping off the head. Of course this doesn’t have to be done last–it could be done at any point in the process.  Unfortunately I have no pics of that....

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More on our gardening disasters

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Mistakes, Thoughtstylings
15 Comments
...ax was not the most practical act in the world, but it was fun. I’d never seen flax growing before, and I wanted to get to know its ways, because it’s such an important plant– the source of linen and linseed oil and of course, flax seeds. I considered it a privilege–I don’t know any better word– to watch it grow tall and bloom. At the end of the season, Erik threshed the heads and collected about a pint of flax...

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DIY Christmas Trees

Mrs. Homegrown
Design
5 Comments
...oks out there which could do with re-purposing. My picks for the chopping block are celebrity bios and inexplicable runaway best-sellers like the Da Vinci Code and 50 Shades of Grey. These publishing phenomena are like biblio oil slicks, cluttering up shelves and choking out endangered books. Erik’s suggestion is Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust – And How You Can Profit from It: How to Build Wealth in Today’s Expanding Rea...

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Bushcraft Video

Mrs. Homegrown
Appropriate Technology, Preparedness
21 Comments
...ike hunting and blacksmithing, but I admire the grit. Here you can learn how to make a lamp out of raccoon fat and crap he scavenges from an abandoned cabin. This project is appealing (???)  to me because it combines homemade oil lamps, which I love, with a more recent interest in novel ways to deal pesky backyard critters. Skunk lamp, anyone? The Pathfinder School also has it’s own reality show–roughly cut footage of their camps and...

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How to Cook Broadleaf Plantain

Mrs. Homegrown
Food, Foraging, Preparedness, Recipes
1 Comment
...r broadleaf plantain (Plantago major, the common weed, not the banana relative). Though I know plantain is very nutritious, it is also bitter and heavily veined, so I prefer to collect it as a medicinal herb. I infuse it into oil that I put into salves and creams and I use it as a fresh poultice on itchy bites and hives. But eating it? Meh. I’ll put baby leaves in a salad. Erik has sprinkled the leaves on pizzas--and I’ll eat anything...

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Cichorium intybus a.k.a. Italian Dandelion

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
3 Comments
...irst time we tasted this plant. Changing the cooking water a few times if you boil Italian dandelion is one way to deal with the bitterness, but we prefer to just throw it together with some fat in a frying pan, such as olive oil and/or pancetta. We also add some hot pepper flakes for a nice hot counter-punch. Italian dandelion makes a good companion to balsamic vinegar marinated pork or game (squirrels perhaps–they’ve been stealing o...

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