Is Purslane the New Kale?

...le fame. We planted some this year in our summer vegetable garden and I’ve used it in a lot of salads this week. Purslane is a common weed in North America. We’d love to be able to forage it in the neighborhood but, for some reason, it only tends to appear in unappetizing locations: usually the gutter (I think it needs a bit more water than what falls naturally from the sky here). You can eat the whole plant: stems and leaves. It has a salty and s...

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How to Make Stock

...g on the top, which you can lift off. Fish Stock Fish stock is, obviously, used as the basis of various classic fish soups and stews: chowder, cioppino, bouillabaisse, lobster bisque, etc. You can make fish stock with fish bits–bones, heads, tails, scrap meat and other fishy leftovers, or you can make shellfish stock with shellfish peelings, like crab, shrimp or lobster shells. Again, this is about letting nothing go to waste, and these parts are...

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Saturday Linkages: Mobile Pods, Soil Erosion and Getting Doored by a Porta-Potty

...come Water-Sustainable http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewild/commentary/report-offers-a-way-for-california-to-become-water-sustainable.html … Man on bike strikes porta-potty door; two hurt: http://bit.ly/1pisQdq Could a medicine used to treat gout also save our citrus? http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/could-a-medicine-used-to-treat-gout-also-save-our-citrus … For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter:...

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Josey Baker’s Awesome Adventure Bread (gluten free!)

...nd held together with chia and psyillium husks… [Psyllium what? We’d never used psyllium seed husks before, but they are apparently used in gluten free baking to help bind ingredients–like chia, they are mucilaginous. We found them in the dietary supplement section of Whole Foods, for what it’s worth. Be sure to get the husks, not powdered psyllium seed, which is a laxative.(!) ] …No yeast. No grain other than oats. It is tasty and moist and slice...

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Who Killed the Non-Electric Toaster?

...ind an alternative and remembered seeing non-electric toasters that people used to use back in the 1920s when our house was built. These types of toasters have not died out entirely. Most non-electric toaster designs look like the one above. Some Googling also led us to an innovative looking non-electric toaster called the DeltaToast. Counter-intuitively, all of these simple stove top toasters coast about twice as much as electric toaster, at leas...

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