Safety Films Night

...alition. Watch as little Jane and Johnny take to the streets for the first time to learn the rules of the road. But bring your motoring friends as well, since we’ll also serve up a selection of classic driver’s safety films. We’ll round out the evening with a few bicycle related shorts and oddities from the world of educational films. The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) is a membership based advocacy organization working to improve th...

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Cichorium intybus a.k.a. Italian Dandelion

...took our supermarket weaned taste buds some time to get used to the first time we tasted this plant. Changing the cooking water a few times if you boil Italian dandelion is one way to deal with the bitterness, but we prefer to just throw it together with some fat in a frying pan, such as olive oil and/or pancetta. We also add some hot pepper flakes for a nice hot counter-punch. Italian dandelion makes a good companion to balsamic vinegar marinate...

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Weekend Linkages: A Geodesic Thanksgiving

...It’s time again for my most cherished #Thanksgiving tradition: Revisiting the time millions of kids had to witness Barney the Dinosaur collapse to the ground and get stabbed to death by cops during the 1997 Macys Parade.đŸ’« pic.twitter.com/doSv6xWMBW — Rob Sheridan (@rob_sheridan) November 25, 2021 A cardboard geodesic dome for your cat The true costs of driving Fall flowers: Which marigold is right for you?...

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Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

...s with cotton, so I scoured well and my fabric turned snowy white. By this time I had realized I’d forgotten to chop the plants, but decided to dye the napkin in the plain plant brew, just to see what would happen. Nothing happened. The napkin floated around in the dye pot, taking on no color. This boded ill. Even without chopping, surely some color should appear. I looked askance at the napkin, wondering if it were truly 100% cotton, or adulterat...

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Getting Hardscaping Right

...do it right the first time, rather than re-do badly done projects multiple times. Go where contractors get materials not the big box stores. A recent trip to Home Depot reminded me about how ugly most of their stuff is. Get materials delivered. I once dropped a very heavy load of Trex on a steep hill near our home and watched, in horror, as it slid a hundred feet down the road. Thankfully no one got hurt. But it was not fun to reload the car on a...

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