A ceramic oil lamp

...much, I made a little seashell oil lamp the very first project in our book Making It. As a child of the electric age it continuously amazes me that I can make light so easily with cooking oil. Also, in reproducing these lights, I feel a connection to history. I’ve no doubt that my ancestors gathered around fish oil lamps in the north and olive oil lamps in the south. To add to their charms, they aren’t based on petroleum–as paraffin tea candles ar...

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Best veggies to cook in a solar oven

...arrots, Brussels sprouts, zucchini) I’m a big fan of roasting and sauteing vegetables, and only like a few vegetables in their steamed form. Brussels sprouts and cauliflower before cooking The same after. Not a failure, exactly, but just …bland and wet, as steamed vegetables always taste to me. Note the color of the cauliflower. That is not oven-browning, but rather the slight discoloration that some vegetables pick up in the solar oven. The color...

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043 Growing Vegetables with Yvonne Savio

...own food. Favorite vegetables. How to harvest vegetables. How to prepare a vegetable garden. Making compost. The problems with municipal compost. Raised beds vs. growing in the ground. Where to buy soil. Testing soil. How to irrigate vegetables in a drought. Buried buckets for watering vegetables. Seeds vs. seedlings. Succession planting. How to plant seedlings. The website and calendar that Yvonne is putting together. Grow LA Victory Garden Progr...

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Maggots!

...like dead leaves, sawdust and dry grass. Nitrogen materials include fruit, vegetable scraps and coffee grounds. The type of pile you construct depends upon the materials you have available to compost. Becky had lots of grass and leaves on a fairly large piece of property and the three pile system seemed the best to deal with a large amount of materials. We purchased our bin from the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation which hosts informative...

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How to Design and Fabricate Homestead Projects

...cy art and art history advice. I’ll use the process of putting together my Vegetable Prison as a way of showing what I’ve leaned from my brainy, art-damaged friends: Go to lots of art shows, museums, take classes, go to furniture stores and watch strange movies One of the things I love about living in a big city is the opportunity to experience lots of high and low culture. I drew on those experiences when it came time to come up with a cage for t...

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