Making Tofu From Scratch at the Institute of Domestic Technology

June 9, 2014

...coffee roasting, bacon curing, bread baking, jam and exotic projects like making your own nocino and toothpaste. One of the perks of teaching at the IDT is getting to sit in on some of the other classes. The coffee roasting class changed my life. Now, every morning, I look forward to fresh coffee I roasted myself in a Whirley-Pop Popcorn maker. This past weekend I sat in a new IDT class taught by author Andrea Nguyen on how to make tofu from scra...

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Making Beer in Plain Language

Mr. Homegrown

December 14, 2008

Beer, Fermentation, Food

13 Comments

...via the Bad Writing Contest Huh? At least the terminology surrounding beer making ain’t that obtuse, but it certainly could use some simplification. For novice home brewers, such as us here at Homegrown Evolution, the terminology creates an unnecessary barrier as impenetrable as a graduate school seminar in the humanities. Let’s see, there’s a mash, a mash tun, a wort, some sparging, malting, all the while specific gravities are measured and hopsi...

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Bees will love your Coyote Brush Hedge

Mrs. Homegrown

March 27, 2014

Bees, Garden Design, Urban Farming

1 Comment

...st at the Curbstone Valley Farm blog with lots of pictures. And here’s its page at Theodore Payne Foundation.) What I didn’t realize until our recent garden tour at the Natural History Museum, though, is that coyote brush makes a perfectly lovely hedge if it’s pruned up right. I’d never even thought about it. Most of the talk one hears about coyote brush is that it is sort of ho-hum in appearance but can be used to provide a background to the more...

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RIP Susan Rudnicki

Mr. Homegrown

May 27, 2019

Animals, Bees

8 Comments

...enders of honeybees I’ve ever been blessed to know. I taught her to rescue bees, taking her on her cutout. I warned her how addictive bees are, and told her I could see her catching bee fever. She almost immediately surpassed me in every aspect of beekeeping, and soon became the person I turned to for mentorship, wisdom, and analysis. She taught me so much about bees and how to fight for what’s right and just. She was formidable in every respect,...

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A Painful Beekeeping Lesson

Mr. Homegrown

July 20, 2015

Animals, Bees

20 Comments

...stung out of me through my suit. One of the things you learn working with bees is that a hive acts as one mind, one consciousness. When bees and humans are working together the relationship feels like telepathy. When we’re at odds it’s like something out of your worst nightmare. You’re struggling with a unseen, intelligent and very powerful adversary, one that feels very alien and “other”. By acting hastily, I caused a potentially dangerous situa...

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