Search Results for: label/peak oil

123 results

The Making of a Great Olive Oil

Mr. Homegrown
Food
4 Comments
Kelly admires the olives Thanks to our good friend Dale Benson, Kelly and I got to see how a really high quality olive oil is made. Dale knows Matt Norelli, the wine and olive oil maker at Preston Vineyards of Dry Creek, an organic family farm near Healdsburg in Northern California. Matt was nice enough to let us watch the complicated olive oil machinery in action. First the freshly picked olives go into a big hopper (above). They are...

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Deodorizing Wash

Mrs. Homegrown
Body Care, Domesticus
4 Comments
Deodorizing wash? Freshening wash? In Making It we called it cleansing spray. I’ve never been quite sure what to call this. It’s not a deodorant, in that it doesn’t really stay on you, deodorizing continuously. It’s not a body wash in that you don’t use it in the shower. This is a little mix I created, a simple blend of water, baking soda and essential oil. It’s something you can splash on and towel off real...

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Bean Fest, Episode 2: Falafel and Babaganoush Recipes

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, Recipes
6 Comments
...You can put them out to soak at breakfast to make falafel for dinner. The one cup of beans will expand to 2 cups when soaked. Toss the beans, garlic, onion, salt and spices into the food processor, along with a glug of olive oil. Whirl until you can’t see whole beans anymore. Add another glug of olive oil and all the greens. Let it whirl until the greens are cut down to speck size. The mix should be a pleasant spring green. Taste and add m...

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Bean Fest, Episode 6: Walton’s Serbian Lima Beans

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, Recipes
4 Comments
...and almost dangerously rich. If you know anyone who thinks eating beans for dinner is akin to wearing a hair shirt, make these for them. Dried Lima beans have a buttery taste on their own. Add to that a huge quantity of olive oil, and the scrumptious umami-savoriness of long-cooked onions, and you’ve got a palette paradise. I’d classify these as a special occasion food, because they are so rich. One modest serving will fill you up. W...

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Moringa!

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Permaculture
1 Comment
...at, in addition to producing edible seed pods, is also used by indigenous people for regulating blood pressure, dealing with joint pain and treating inflammation. The seed pods can be pressed to produce a high quality cooking oil. The leaves are also edible and the plant is drought tolerant and will grow in poor soil. Native to the southern foothills of the Himalayas, the Moringa tree is cultivated in many parts of Asia as well as Mexico and Afri...

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Looking for the Union Label

Mr. Homegrown
Domesticus
3 Comments
We’ve got a bad case of Ohrwurm, a German expression translated as “earworm” and used to describe a song stuck in your head. Our earworm came after a search for union made socks and underwear on the internets recalled a highly catchy ad jingle from the roller disco era, “Look for the Union Label” (youngsters can watch it on youtube here). We looked for the union label and we were surprised to find it via a company c...

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Harvesting and Drying Calendula

Mrs. Homegrown
Body Care, Calendula series, Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, How-to
30 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown here: Okay, so in a previous post I talked about growing Calendula. This post I’m going to talk about harvesting and drying it. The next post I’ll do on the topic will be about making a skin-healing salve from the dried petals, olive oil and beeswax. When to harvest:  Start harvesting your Calendula as soon as the first flush of flowers is in full bloom. Don’t try to “save” the flowers. The more you...

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Beans 101 (Return of Bean Friday!)

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, How-to
16 Comments
...th the pasta, then you’ll have something green in your bowl, too. Toss together beans, chopped vegetables and cooked pasta to make a cold pasta salad. Add dressing and you’re good to go. Straight beans tossed with oil, vinegar and maybe a little parsley or green onion can make a nice cold /room temperature salad, too. Heat up your beans in all their wonderful juice and ladle this over cooked rice. Or polenta. Or couscous. Or whatever...

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Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Buyer Beware

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
From the University of California Food Blog, a warning about fraud in the olive oil business: “Researchers at UC Davis and in Australia discovered that 69 percent of the imported oils sampled, compared to just 10 percent of the California-produced oils sampled, failed to meet internationally accepted standards for extra virgin olive oil. The imported oils tested were purchased from supermarkets and “big box” stores in three Californi...

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Citified Parched Corn

Mrs. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation, How-to, Recipes
7 Comments
.... The recipe, such as it is: Parched corn is just toasted dried corn. You toast it by tossing it in a hot skillet. Nothing could be simpler. There are only a couple of variables you need to decide on. The first is the raging oil or no oil controversy that exists among parchers. It’s not a deep fried product by any means, but some folks like putting a little oil in the pan. Maybe it helps spices stick? Purists insist that there should be no...

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