How to Cycle Safely

December 14, 2012

...can also be handy. When going through an intersection watch out for people making left tuns. Assume that you are not seen even if you are wearing a florescent pink bunny suit. Also watch out for people making right turns. Always assume the worst is about to happen and have a plan to either turn quickly or slam on the brakes. Avoid the door zone. There are rare exceptions when I will dip into the door zone briefly (only while going very slowly). Bu...

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George Rector: M.F.K. Fisher’s Dirty Old Uncle

Mrs. Homegrown

February 11, 2016

Recipes, Reviews

5 Comments

...or, c.1937. Rector (1878-1947) was a restaurateur and popular author. This book is ostensibly a cookbook–I don’t know what else it would be–but it doesn’t have recipes per se. Instead, he just mentions how to cook things as he’s steaming along. I’m in love with the hardboiled yet strangely comforting prose (though I do have to ignore the casual sexism and racism of the period). Seems most cookbooks these days range from bland to, at best, passiona...

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2014: The Year in Review

Mr. Homegrown

December 29, 2014

Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

...hat to do with the wild foods they gather. Pascal and Mia are working on a book that I predict will be the foraging book. September Stoicism Today In a very unlikely turn of events, an essay we wrote was included in a book on stoicism. I tried not to let it puff my ego up too much. October I Made Shoes In October we hosted an intense three day turnshoe making workshop with Randy Fritz. This was one of the more commented upon things we did this yea...

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Shoemaking Advice?

Mrs. Homegrown

September 13, 2013

Domesticus

62 Comments

...ferent ways. Erik wailed about the horrible hippie-ness of it all when I showed him the illustrations of what I might make, but he wears cheap Chinese martial art shoes, so I don’t think he has moral or aesthetic high ground here. The other book is The Make it Yourself Shoe Book by Christine Lewis Clark. Not so surprisingly, this one was published in the 1977. The 70’s seems to be the last time anyone tried to make their own shoes–outside of Portl...

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How to be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman

Mrs. Homegrown

August 30, 2016

Domesticus

13 Comments

...some craft: blacksmith, brewer, rope maker, dyer, tanner, painter, tailor, bookbinder. And heck, every good housewife had to know how to do a whole lot of stuff, from sewing to cheese making to brewing, and was a master of those crafts as a matter of course. How wonderful it would be to walk those streets and watch it all going on! For those of us who like to engage in this kind of wishful thinking, Goodman’s book is a close second to a long visit...

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