Search Results for: label/solar cooking/page/4/2011/04/making-it

472 results

More On Preventing Plants From Falling Over

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
2 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown’s post on her storm-flattened flax patch reminded me that I had a photo I took while taking John Jeavons’ Biointensive workshop earlier this month. In front of Jeavons is a bed of fava beans, also notorious for falling over in the slightest breeze. The randomly strung network of twine will support the fava as it grows. You can see from my own fava bed below that I could have benefited from this low tech solution: Whi...

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The kids are all bikin’

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes
1 Comment
...tails of biking in L.A. (hint–route choice!) and pitched the notion of changing our built environment to encourage walking and cycling. Here in Los Angeles, with the majority of bike commuters being poor folks of color, making our city more bikable is a civil rights issue. For an overview of the bike to work day festivities (which ironically, since they take place in the middle of a weekday, tend to involve mostly the self-employed or unemp...

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Make a Pepsi Can Stove

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
1 Comment
...esult is incredibly light. I cut the top off of a 24 ounce Heineken can to make a pot and I used some chicken wire and aluminum foil for a stand. Basically this setup is good for boiling a cup of water, so don’t plan on making any complex balsamic reduction sauces. You can use the stove for coffee and for simple things that need boiling water, i.e. instant soups. Light and compact, this stove is ready for when the shit hits the fan....

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TV Turnoff week April 23 – 30, 2008

Mr. Homegrown
Events, Thoughtstylings
RLeave a comment
We don’t come from the sackcloth and ashes wing of the urban homestead movement. There’s no forced austerity around the Homegrown Evolution compound, no sufferfests, no “more-meek-than-thou” contests. It’s about pleasure not denial, after all. But, to use the “d” word, one thing we denied ourselves for many years was television. And during this TV Turnoff week, we thought we’d share our struggles w...

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How To Make Hoshigaki (Dried Persimmons)

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation, How-to
11 Comments
Hoshigaki image from Wikipedia Hoshigaki are a Japanese delicacy made by, believe it or not, gently massaging persimmons while they air dry. I took a workshop this weekend taught by Laurence Hauben on how to make this remarkable fall treat. It’s persimmon season right now, so if you want to try this at home you better jump on it. While a lot can go wrong in the month it takes to make Hoschigaki, the process is not all that complicated. The...

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California Dreaming

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
2 Comments
...verted every spare bit of space into a mini-farm. There were impressive rows of cabbage and other greens all planted in plowed rows. The crops took up so much room that there was, in fact, very little space left to even walk. It seemed, at first, a pleasant dream of a utopian future of efficient urban land use with an emphasis on growing tasty and healthy food. But when I awoke I realized that this idyllic vision was actually a nightmare. Those r...

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4 Vermicomposting Tips

Mrs. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture
11 Comments
...terested. Click here for details). Darren dropped a few vermicomposting tips during the beginning class that we thought we’d share: 1) Worms don’t like empty space in their bin. They dislike voids. They appreciate it very much if you bury their entire working area under a very thick layer of light dry carbon material, like shredded newspaper or chopped straw. Yes, it’s standard practice to put a layer of cover material over the...

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3 things to do with citrus peels

Mrs. Homegrown
Cleaning, Domesticus, Food, Food Preservation, How-to
11 Comments
...7;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 vinegar. After only a couple of days it started smelling really nice. Now it’s about a week old and doesn’t seem to be gett...

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Cargo Bike Roundup

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes, Transportation
9 Comments
...n has forgotten every word of his college German, so all we can make out is that this bike represents the Grüne Liga, some sort of environmental organization. Don’t know if this trike is an ad, or if the Grüne Liga uses it to distribute literature or environmentally correct currywurst. We imagine this bike belongs to some way eurotrashy DJ dude who uses it to shuttle his 100 kilo collection of Eurodisco hits to all the hot Berlin nightclu...

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Return of Recipe Friday! Carrot Soup

Mrs. Homegrown
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,...

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