Growing Pink Oyster Mushrooms

...r easily out-competing molds that can tank other mushrooms. The culture we used in step 2 aggressively colonized the grain (we used sorghum bird seed called milo) as well as the straw. If anything the problem I had is that it went faster than I expected. Once the jars are colonized you have to move the grain to straw. Nature has a tendency not to care about human schedules. Hot Pink Results Some observations from this last experiment. We chose pin...

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Saturday Linkages: Forklift Furniture and Pickled Turnips

...Turnips) http://wp.me/pWGRR-YU DIY Forklift Furniture: 10 DIY Projects for Used Wooden Pallets | Designs & Ideas on Dornob http://dornob.com/forklift-furniture-10-diy-projects-for-used-wooden-pallets/ … Champions of wood planing: http://boingboing.net/2013/02/08/champions-of-wood-planing.html … IKEA Hackers: IKEA featuring JBL http://www.ikeahackers.net/2013/01/ikea-featuring-jbl.html?spref=tw … How to stock a minimalist kitchen: http://tinyrevolu...

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Sourdough Pancake Recipe

...to use all that tangy delicious starter to make pancakes. For years we’ve used Nancy Silverton’s recipe. Basically, the starter fills in for the flour and milk used in standard pancake recipes. That’s all there is to it. The only downside to the new way we feed our starter is that I don’t make these delicious sourdough pancakes anymore. You could, of course, still make them by building up more starter the night before. But make sure that starter...

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Swedish Shack Attack

...ly Swedish shack we spotted in the arctic town of Kiruna. A family of five used to live in it in the early 20th century and it can’t be much more than a hundred square feet. No doubt, “shacking up” meant fewer trips to the woodpile during those cold winters (“winter” being nine months out of the year in this place). Its current location is in the parking lot of an old folks home. Looks like it’s now used for storage. A special thanks to the folks...

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Build a Ghetto Solar Cooker

...d we finished it off by using one of Los Angeles’ ubiquitous abandoned car tires as a cradle to keep the cooker oriented towards the sun. It ain’t pretty but it works. In our first test we reached 160º inside the oven, but we think we can do better with some refinements such as finding a black pot with a lid. Yesterday we cooked up a somewhat disappointing batch of “chocolate pudding” which ended up with the consistency and taste of warm cake batt...

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