Einkorn Pasta

iac patients” who normally can̵7;t eat wheat products. Jovial̵7;s website cautions, however, that einkorn has not yet been evaluated by the FDA for consumption by celiac patients. Einkorn does contain gluten but it may be in a “more digestible” form than other wheat varieties according to Jovial. I̵7;ve found Jovial̵7;s einkorn products at Whole Foods and on Amazon. See the Jovial Foods website for more informati...

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Los Angeles Bread Bakers Blog

Just a short time after planting–a field of wheat sprouts in Los Angeles County. The Los Angeles Bread Bakers, that I helped co-found along with Mark Stambler and Teresa Sitz, now has a blog: losangelesbreadbakers.blogspot.com. A big thanks to Saul Alpert-Abrams for putting it together and to Paul Morgan for blogging! Paul has been writing about the wheat we helped plant at Maggie̵7;s Farm in Agoura Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles on t...

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Saturday Linkages: Bus Offices and Secret Doors

...ex  Thanks, Davis! Gardening grounded design by Thomas Rainer: No They Didn̵7;t!: A Gallery of Mockable Landscapes http://landscapeofmeaning.blogspot.com/p/no-they-didnt-gallery-of-mockable.html?spref=tw … Ancient wheat: making a comeback http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Artisanal-Wheat-On-the-Rise.html#.UQM4YKWpmhs.twitter … Soul Searching The secret to feeling like you have more time available – Boing Boing http://boingbo...

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Harvesting and Drying Calendula

Mrs. Homegrown here: Okay, so in a previous post I talked about growing Calendula. This post I̵7;m going to talk about harvesting and drying it. The next post I̵7;ll do on the topic will be about making a skin-healing salve from the dried petals, olive oil and beeswax. When to harvest:  Start harvesting your Calendula as soon as the first flush of flowers is in full bloom. Don̵7;t try to “save” the flowers. The more you...

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Our New Earth Oven and How We Built It

The almost completed horno–waiting for its final plaster coat in a few weeks. Kurt Gardella and Ben Loescher taught an amazing earth oven workshop at our house this weekend. Keep your eye out for classes these guys offer if you are interested in earth ovens, adobe houses or earth plasters and finishes. Contact information is below. Here I thought I̵7;d briefly describe the process with a few pictures. One of the nice things ab...

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Countdown

Our new book comes out just about a month–April 26th–and today two super-advance copies came to us by mail. Believe me, it̵7;s awfully strange to see something that has existed only as computer files suddenly materialize on your porch! We realize we haven̵7;t given our new book a formal introduction yet, so here goes.  Making It: Radical Home-Ec for a Post Consumer World is our follow up to The Urban Homestead . The...

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How to Make Soba Noodles

Last month I took an amazing class with author and chef Sonoko Sakai on how to make soba noodles by hand. She̵7;s a great teacher and I managed to make a halfway decent couple of servings of noodles during the class. Like many Japanese arts, soba making has a series of very precise steps. The recipe itself is simple (just buckwheat flour and water), though you do have to pay close attention to the temperature and humidity in the room. Whil...

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A Homemade Mattress?

The Princess and the Pea by Edmund Dulac This is the story of my life. I read about some old domestic technology or product that makes a lot of sense. Perhaps it is obsolete. Or perhaps it is only done/made in more enlightened countries. Nonetheless, I want it. So I have to make from scratch. Yesterday we met a great couple, Renae and Dimitri. Renae mentioned she was thinking about making her own mattress. I was intrigued because just that morni...

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New Health Food Trends at the Natural Products Food Expo West

This weekend I attended, for or the second year in a row, the Natural Products Expo West. At this massive convention, health food, natural supplement and cosmetic concerns pitch their products to retailers. And, again this year, I did a lot of intemperate sampling. For the sake of you, our dear readers, I ate every known power bar, sports beverage and processed soy/hemp/chia meat substitute so you won̵7;t have to. It was the human equivalen...

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Bar Codes on Veggies

...n the QR code on the label. The code links to a mobile website detailing origin, soil composition, organic fertilizer content percentage (as opposed to chemical), use of pesticides and herbicides and even the name of the farm it was grown on. Consumers can also access the same information over the Ibaraki Agricultural Produce Net website by inputting a numbered code on each label.” Though we̵7;re not Luddites, we have mixed feelings abo...

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