Chicks, Mayonnaise and Personal Responsibility

...at your farmers’ market. But in the meantime, Eat Wild is good place to start. Also, we’ve posted this egg producers chart from The Cornucopia Institute before–it grades egg producers on how well they keep their hens. I don’t believe the practice of killing the male chicks is a factor in their grading, but at least you can support farmers who let their hens hunt and peck out in the sun–or find out how your regular brand scores! Organic Egg Scorec...

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How to Make Amazake

...process by boiling the mixture, otherwise you’re heading down the road to making sake, something we plan on attempting in the fall. Taking a tip from the guru of fermentation Sandor Ellix Katz, we first boiled two cups of water and added the amazake to it to prevent burning. Mix well and as soon as the amazake begins to boil remove from the heat and refrigerate. You can eat it as a porridge or cut it with some more water to enjoy as a beverage. Y...

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Whole Wheat Sourdough Starter Recipe

...ter in the refrigerator, but for no more than two weeks with whole wheat starter. White starter will last in the fridge for longer. If this turns your crank, you can sit around your compound watching your sourdough starter bubble while geeking out on Cornell Professor Steven Laurence Kaplan’s book Good Bread is Back, which details the revival of sourdough bread making in France in the early 1990s. Kaplan notes that sourdough, “rises less than a do...

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Worth Doing From Scratch: Corn Tortillas

...f that’s easy and economical. Now you should be suspicious of any tortilla making advice dispensed by a gabacho. Let’s just say it’s easy and the results are way better than those dry tortillas you buy at the store. Some things I’ve learned: I have a cast iron tortilla press that works great but my Mexicano friends in the know suggested a wooden press. Making masa from scratch is a huge amount of work and I’ve done just fine with supermarket masa...

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Tips on growing great garlic

...f they appear. The flowers pull energy from the plant that is better spent making big cloves. The flowers are also edible: some farmers are actually making more money selling the flowers as culinary exotics. Growing garlic in hot climates I’ve had mixed success growing garlic in Los Angeles. It turns out I was growing the wrong varieties. Most garlics appreciate cold weather, including some time spent under a blanket of snow. For hot climates you...

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