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

June 2, 2016

Domesticus, Food, How-to, Solar Oven Summer

...you don’t want to use so much that the coating becomes thick and flaky. I used about 1 tablespoon of wax pellets for cloths about 11 inches square, just to give you an idea. Place the cookie sheet in an oven set between 150F/64C and 185F/85C for about 10 minutes, just until the wax melts. Safety note: Keep the oven low–don’t be tempted to use a hot oven for speed, because the wax could discolor at higher temperatures, or even burst into flame if...

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Baking Bread with Specialty Malts

Mr. Homegrown

June 13, 2016

Beer, Bread, Food

2 Comments

...beer making and just use malted grains directly in your bread. The grains used in making beer are, mostly, barley that has been malted (sprouted) and then either caramelized or roasted. To make beer you soak the grains in warm water to extract the sugars that form in the malting process. Fermenting that sugary malt water creates alcohol. Most of the grain used to make beer is two or six-row malt. You add so-called “specialty” grains (that have be...

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Seat Weaving for Fun and Profit

Mr. Homegrown

July 26, 2019

Design

6 Comments

...for one chair. I ordered two, 2-pound rolls since I correctly anticipated making some mistakes the first time and I’m planning on making more of these chairs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQkE05DD9_Y I found a helpful seat weaving tutorial on YouTube by Ed Hammond a.k.a. Peerless Rattan. Hammond has sixteen videos on how to weave and cane a variety of chairs. Please note that in addition to ladderback chairs there’s a lot of mid-century Scandi...

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Growing Potatoes in Tires

Mr. Homegrown

January 29, 2008

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

20 Comments

...potatoes which we just planted. As we did last year, we’re growing them in used tires filled with compost (see our surprise potato harvest in a post from last September). As the plant grows you add another tire to the stack, causing the growth of more potatoes. An alternate method, suggested by Homegrown Revolution reader Chris, is to dig trenches and mound up earth around the base of the potato plant as it grows. We’ve planted earlier this year,...

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What laundry detergent should I use for greywater applications?

Mrs. Homegrown

February 7, 2014

Water and Power, Water Conservation

35 Comments

..., so some people will opt to soak the bag in a cup of hot water first–like making tea–and then dump the water and the bag into the wash. Other people stew the nuts in water and make soap nut tea, which can then be used like liquid soap, for both hand washing and laundry. There’s lots of info online about soap nuts if you poke around a bit. I just remembered that I posted here back in 2010, asking for feedback on the nuts, and got lots of it. So yo...

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