My Fellow Californians, Please Water Your Trees

January 29, 2018

...The California Drought and Water Use,” challenging this sort of knee jerk water conservation. They said, Water the trees. Trees form the infrastructure of our landscapes and urban forest, and are their permanent or, at least, most long-lived and valuable components around which the other plants intermesh, if not depend. Mature trees are among the most valuable and difficult-to-replace plants in urban areas. Their loss would be devastating. Trees...

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How to Make Stock

Mrs. Homegrown

June 19, 2014

Food, How-to

17 Comments

...along with the bones. Roast all of this in a roasting pan in an oven set to 400F for around 40 minutes. You want it to brown but not burn. Transfer the meat and veggies to a soup pot. See if you can deglaze the roasting pan and transfer all those tasty little brown bits to the pot, too. Add water to cover all the bones. Maybe add a cup or so of red wine. Add lots of peppercorns. Add a bay leaf or two. And salt. Bring this to a boil and then reduce...

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Rain Barrels

Mr. Homegrown

January 9, 2007

rainwater harvesting

1 Comment

...stored water. Thankfully, there are simpler strategies for harvesting rainwater. Rainwater used for irrigating plants does not need filtering or purification, and since outdoor watering accounts for the number one household water use, you’ll be using that water where it is most needed. Now, once again at the risk of sounding like a broken record, our strict rule around the SurviveLA homestead is that all irrigated plants must be useful, i.e. you...

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Beans 101 (Return of Bean Friday!)

Mrs. Homegrown

March 1, 2013

Bean Fest, Food, How-to

21 Comments

...easier it is to burn them. I’d recommend cooking them with with plenty of water, evenadding water if you need to, just to be safe. You can always cook some of the liquid off at the end. Which brings us to the lid. Keep the lid on if you want to hold in moisture and heat. With a lid and the lowest possible heat setting on your stove, you can keep beans simmering safely for hours. But like I said, if you want to boil off some liquid to condense the...

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Gourmet Foraging and Advanced Acorn Processing

Mrs. Homegrown

October 24, 2013

Food, Foraging, How-to, Preparedness

31 Comments

...ich one you choose depends on how you plan to use the acorns. You use cold water leaching to make acorn meal suitable for baking. The cold water preserves the starchiness of the acorn meal, which makes it work well in breads and pancakes and muffins and such. Hot water leaching removes the starch, but seems to bring out the nutty flavor more, which makes it better for using the acorns in savory foods, like acorn burgers, or, Pascal says, in sauces...

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