No-Knead Artisinal Bread Part I

...es in the kitchen that cause marital strife. 2. In the morning I mix the final dough, carefully measuring ingredients on a digital scale. While I use a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, I̵7;m trying to wean myself of its use. Kneading, it turns out, is unnecessary labor and can be replaced by simply folding the dough a few times during the initial fermentation period. 3. After mixing the dough I let it rest for around 20 minutes to allo...

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Cleaning the Sink with Baking Soda and Lemons

   Our sink, freshly cleaned and so darn photogenic!This is because you can̵7;t see all the clutter just out of view.   A little green cleaning review here. It is possible to keep a sink white and shiny without bleach or other toxic cleansers. I took pictures this week while I was cleaning to prove it. Below is our grungy sink. A photo can̵7;t quite capture that particularly scuzzy quality a dirty sink has, th...

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Using Greywater from your Washing Machine

With our current bad drought conditions it makes no sense to pour perfectly good water down the sewer. So we just joined the greywater underground with our illegal washing machine surge tank, and the installation was a piece of cake. We built our washing machine surge tank based on the design in Art Ludwig̵7;s book Create an Oasis with Greywater. The purpose of the surge tank is to prevent the built-in pump in the washing machine from burni...

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Strange brew: herbal steam for a chest cold and sinus pain

Mrs. Homegrown here: I̵7;ve had a bad cold for almost a week now. It̵7;s gone through all the classic steps: the sore throat, then the snot factory, then the ghastly “productive cough” that keeps you awake at night, and on top of it all, the lost voice. Oh, the fun! I thought I was almost out of the woods, but then I seem to have hit a cul-de-sac involving the sinuses. Sinus trouble is a new malady for me–I̵7;m jus...

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Looking for the Union Label

We̵7;ve got a bad case of Ohrwurm, a German expression translated as “earworm” and used to describe a song stuck in your head. Our earworm came after a search for union made socks and underwear on the internets recalled a highly catchy ad jingle from the roller disco era, “Look for the Union Label” (youngsters can watch it on youtube here). We looked for the union label and we were surprised to find it via a company c...

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2011 in Review: Urban Homestead Trademark Dispute

...and organizations including our publisher Feral House/Process Media, public radio station KCRW, Denver Urban Homesteading, and the Santa Monica Public Library. In addition DI successfully manged to get Facebook to take down a page about our book The Urban Homestead, that our publisher had put up, in addition to Denver Urban Homesteading̵7;s Facebook page. As of this date both of those Facebook pages are still down. The Electronic Frontier Fou...

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What Preparedness Lessons Did You Learn From Hurricane Sandy?

We̵7;re interested in hearing from our east coast readers about how they rode out Hurricane Sandy. How did the storm impact you? How did your preparations work out? Is there anything you would do differently next time? Hurricane Sandy was a reminder to us to take a look at our preparedness. We may not have monster storms here in Los Angeles, but we certainly are overdue for a big earthquake. It̵7;s been a long time since we̵7;ve tak...

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Sourdough Recipe #1 The Not Very Whole Wheat Loaf

Whole wheat fetishists will have to wait for our whole wheat sourdough loaf recipe (we̵7;re working on it–whole wheat is trickier to work with than bad-ass white flour). In the meantime here̵7;s the Homegrown Evolution Not Very Whole Wheat Loaf based on a recipe by Nancy Silverton. You can use either our whole wheat starter or our white starter. And though the instructions are long, this is an easy recipe assuming that you have bee...

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How to Make Amazake

...megrown Revolution compound earlier this week. You can find amazake in the isles of upscale health food stores thanks to the same generation of hippies who brought tofu to the flyover states back in the 1960s. Or you can make it yourself and save some dead presidents. Here̵7;s how: 1. Get your Aspergillus orzae in the form of inoculated rice grains called koji. We found our koji in the refrigeration cabinet of our local Japanese supermarket....

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Slaughtering Turkeys for Thanksgiving

A noble Royal Palm tom. This photo by Kevin Saff. The rest are ours. This post is not for everyone, so we̵7;ve concealed most of it behind the jump. This week we helped our friend, Steve, slaughter and dress four turkeys for Thanksgiving. There will be pictures, so those of you who are interested can get some idea of what the process involves. Steve is an especially conscious carnivore, because he raises and slaughters all the m...

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