Beans 101 (Return of Bean Friday!)

March 1, 2013

. Check the recipes tag, too.) A pot of beans, I’d argue, is one of the keystones of cheap eating. A big pot of beans costs little, and can morph into many meals over the course of a week. This not only saves money, but it saves time. It rescues you from the dreaded “what’s for dinner?” question. Beans got your back. Skeptical? Here are a few very simple dishes you can throw together if you’ve got cooked beans in the...

Return of Recipe Friday! Carrot Soup

Mrs. Homegrown

October 28, 2011

Food, Recipes

12 Comments

ng with baby carrots was kind of fantastic. No chopping! No peeling! Doing this reminded me that I haven’t shared this recipe on the blog, so I dug up the original recipe card. This is one of the oldest recipes I have. It sort of taught me the basics of soup making. I no longer refer to the recipe when I cook, but it was good to go back and see the original instructions. This soup is just about an ideal soup. It’s fast and flexible,...

Thoughts on Samhain

Mrs. Homegrown

November 1, 2011

Thoughtstylings

10 Comments

Image from the beautiful book, Haunted Air by Ossian Brown Mrs. Homegrown here: I celebrate Samhain on November 1st because I enjoy marking the changing seasons of the year by making these old festivals my own. It’s so easy to lose track of time in an electronic culture. It’s even easier to lose track when you live in Los Angeles, land of the perpetual sunshine. Samhain marks the last harvest of the year. The weather is...

Newsflash: Thift shop where rich people live

Mrs. Homegrown

March 26, 2011

Thoughtstylings

29 Comments

Some newsflash, huh? Los Angeles has plenty of rich people, but many more poor people, and legions of dedicated thrifters. I’ve pretty much given up hope of finding bargains here. Your chances of happening on a really good find in this city is equivalent to being struck by lightning. But I’m learning that it pays to take little jaunts out of town now and then, to find better hunting grounds. Case in point, I visited the idyllic town...

How to Roast Your Own Coffee in a Stovetop Popcorn Maker

Mr. Homegrown

April 30, 2012

Food, How-to

12 Comments

Thanks to the Institute for Domestic Technology, I learned roast my own coffee at home in a Whirley-Pop Stovetop Popcorn Popper. It’s a simple, if smokey, process. You heat up the popper on your stove top over a medium/high heat and dump in 10 ounces of green coffee beans. The beans we used were ordered from Sweet Maria’s who carry a wide selection of high-end beans at inexpensive prices. The only trick with the Whirley-Po...

Spent Grain Bread–We Brew Econo

Mr. Homegrown

February 18, 2008

Miscellaneous

2 Comments

D. Boon from the Minutemen (the musicians, not the rifle clutching revolutionary war dudes or the contemporary anti-immigrant racist dudes) dreamt of a day where every block would have its own band, a distributed and democratic D.I.Y network of musical creativity encircling the globe. Why trek to faraway Hollywood when you can jam at home in San Pedro? With the band on every block, Homegrown Evolution would like to add a brewery in every kitche...

Indigo 101

Mrs. Homegrown

May 24, 2012

Domesticus, Gardening, Herbs

5 Comments

s and notes which I hope will help other indigo beginners sort things out. Here’s a stack of stuff he’s working on : And here’s some silk he dyed with bougainvillaea flowers. The two tone effect is just how it happened to dye. You rock, Graham!: But back to the indigo. Indigo seedlings on Graham’s front step. A hint from Graham: to ensure germination, scarify the seed with sand paper and soak overnight before plan...

Bean Fest, Episode 4: Frijoles Refritos

Mrs. Homegrown

September 10, 2010

Bean Fest, Food, Recipes

7 Comments

arian set is that they are traditionally fried in lard. But vegetable oil can be used just as well, and I’d add for the sake of fairness, that real, home cooked lard from well-raised pigs is not such a bad fat. For what it’s worth. To make refried beans you just need to have some cooked beans on hand, the classic choice being pintos. In Tex-Mex cooking the pintos meant for refritos are first cooked with onion, garlic and a pork rind....

A Review of Masanobu Fukuoka’s Sowing Seeds in the Desert

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2012

Gardening, Miscellaneous, Permaculture, Reviews

4 Comments

ed by Chelsea Green. Fukuoka’s writing deals with the tricky practical and spiritual issues involved with our place in nature’s synergistic complexities. To intervene or not to intervene is often the question when it comes to what Fukuoka called his “natural farming” method. Fukuoka councils a humbleness before nature, a cessation of the materialist drive to understand and control. Fukuoka illustrates this approach in a pe...