Waxed Cloth Food Wrap (Made in a solar oven for bonus self-righteousness points)

...didn’t get too hot. I put the tray in the oven, closed the lid (no clips, making the heating is less efficient on purpose) and waited about 10-15 minutes. The temp would quickly rise above 150F and the wax would dissolve, then I’d take it out before it got any hotter. Fast and easy! Again, the reasons you want to keep the temps low is because 1) you might get discolored wax if you let it bake for too long above 185F and 2) in the very unlikely ev...

Read…

How to Make Stock

...but the following will give you the basics. Again, don’t be nervous about making any type of stock. Just boil some stuff up and you’ll have stock. If anyone makes meat stock regularly and has tips, please chime in! Chicken Stock If you’ve just had a roast chicken or turkey, save the carcass. Put it in a big pot along with the basic vegetable stock ingredients from above–celery, onion and carrot at minimum. You can increase the amount of onion and...

Read…

Butter Making Demo at the Natural History Museum

Join us for what I promise will be the Burning Man of butter making this Friday evening at the Natural History Museum. We’ll be doing a hands-on shake your own butter demo with live drummers. Best of all it’s freeeeeeeeeeeee, but you need to RSVP. And there’s more: MUSIC with COASTIN (5-7 pm) and Evan Weiss from Junk (7-9pm) BUTTER MAKING with authors, Erik Knutzen & Kelly Coyne (*timed-ticket required) POTTING SUCCULENTS (*timed-ticket required)...

Read…

Making It Available in Overdrive App

...ecreational library visit, my favorite librarian informed me that our book Making It is available for download in the Overdrive app. Ego boosted! Many public libraries, in addition to books, now have a long list of digital gewgaws, apps and resources. One of those apps is Overdrive, which allows you to download eBooks, videos and audio books to your digital devices for free. Over 30,000 libraries worldwide use Overdrive to distribute materials. To...

Read…

Making Beer in Plain Language

...on the ground contains sugar from the grains. 4. The extracted sugars are boiled with some hops for an hour. 5. After boiling for an hour you cool down the liquid as rapidly as possible. Here comrade Ben uses ice and a coil of copper tubing with water from a garden hose flowing through it, to bring that temperature down. 6. The cooled liquid is poured into a glass carboy and yeast is added. After a week or so this will be transferred with a tube i...

Read…