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

...and refrigerating cookie and pastry dough. To begin, though, I’d recommend making just one or two. Test them and see if you like them and how you’ll use them before going into production whole hog. 12″ (30cm) square might be a good starting point. Lay the cloth on a cookie sheet protected with foil or parchment and sprinkle the surface evenly with grated wax or wax pellets. You don’t need a ton of wax. You want to saturate the cloth, but you don’t...

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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...

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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)...

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Making Tofu From Scratch at the Institute of Domestic Technology

...coffee roasting, bacon curing, bread baking, jam and exotic projects like making your own nocino and toothpaste. One of the perks of teaching at the IDT is getting to sit in on some of the other classes. The coffee roasting class changed my life. Now, every morning, I look forward to fresh coffee I roasted myself in a Whirley-Pop Popcorn maker. This past weekend I sat in a new IDT class taught by author Andrea Nguyen on how to make tofu from scra...

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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...

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