Easy Scandinavian-Style Bread

...ourdough starter, take on the mantle (or apron?) of Household Baker, and start making these loaves myself, but I’m already taking on extra chores with him off his feet, so I’m not inclined to take up this one as well. Yet we can’t live two months without good bread. What to do? Fortunately, I’ve found a solution to our bread crisis: a perfectly good yeasted recipe which makes a dense whole grain loaf with minimal effort. No starter. No kneading. N...

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Moon Gazing

...involve food, but crafts, or songs, or copious toasting–or maybe we can just all stand outside and howl at the moon. It would do us some good, I think. What is a blood moon anyway, you ask? It’s a moon stained red by the Earth’s shadow. What’s a super moon? It’s a full moon which is as close to Earth as it can be in its elliptical orbit, making it appear extra large in the sky. For more authoritative information on this lunar event, and for best v...

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The Sound is Forced, the Notes are Few

...a few of those how to “be” under quarantine hot takes and I’ve even spent part of my time making bad watercolors. I even wrote a post about that later effort (part of a longer post about learning old school architectural drawing) but never hit the publish button because it just didn’t feel right. A large part of that bad feeling comes from the realization that while I’m upping my drawing skills in quarantine, underpaid grocery clerks are risking t...

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What You Can Do to Make Our Streets Safer

...ve never seen a road they don’t like and have spent the past hundred years making our cities into dangerous traffic sewers (see this article). Their lobbyists have a seat on municipal traffic commissions and they have the ear of our politicians. Thankfully there’s an alternative. If you want roadside assistance you can sign up for the Better World Club or just use the towing service offered by your insurance company. The tow trucks all come from t...

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grub

...ile shields or moon trips anymore, at least it’s comforting to read in the pages of BPM that the citizens of Bonner Springs, Kansas can visit the brand new National Poultry Museum. This month’s issue of BPM also has a fascinating article by Harvey Ussery, “Black Soldier Fly, White Magic” on raising black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) grubs as poultry and fish feed. “If we offer the grubs 100 pounds of food wastes, for example, they will reduce i...

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