The Farmstead Egg Guide & Cookbook Winner is . . .

March 24, 2014

.... . . Cheryl Brodzinsky who also has a blog, Living Design, “a place dedicated to designing and all things living.” Congrats to Cheryl and many thanks to Terry Golson for her book, the The Farmstead Egg Guide & Cookbook. You can keep up with Terry at hencam.com....

Read…

Notes on Mark Bittman’s “Behind the Scenes of What We Eat”

Mrs. Homegrown

November 20, 2012

Events, Reviews, Thoughtstylings

3 Comments

...is books at a table. As I walked past, I heard a breathless 20-something woman (backed by a few of her friends) ask the bookstore guy, “Which of his books is a vegan recipe book?” That’s the kind of change I like to see....

Read…

Defining a Garden’s Purpose

Mr. Homegrown

July 8, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

13 Comments

...imagine living in the building and wandering down to the garden to read a book, do some work on a laptop, throw a party or simply to soak in the overwhelming peacefulness of this lush space. Sean Stout looking down on the garden from the balcony of his apartment. It’s also clear that the Organic Mechanics created this garden on a budget. The materials were scavenged, but carefully chosen (I’m often too indiscriminate with the objects I place in t...

Read…

Why You Should Avoid Staking Trees

Mr. Homegrown

November 26, 2012

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Miscellaneous, Trees

6 Comments

...efits from chaos and shock. This idea is the subject of Nassim Taleb’s new book on what he calls “anti-fragility“. By contrast, natural or organic systems are antifragile: They need some dose of disorder in order to develop. Deprive your bones of stress and they become brittle. This denial of the antifragility of living or complex systems is the costliest mistake that we have made in modern times. Stifling natural fluctuations masks real problems,...

Read…

How to Bake a Traditional German Rye Bread

Mr. Homegrown

December 5, 2012

Bread, Fermentation, Food, How-to, Recipes

33 Comments

...00% whole rye sourdough loaves. I’ve used as my guide a nicely illustrated book How to Make Bread by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou. His specialty is just the sort of rustic German style breads I’ve always wanted to learn to bake. What I love in particular about his caraway rye sourdough loaf (pictured above) is the crust. Unlike most other breads you don’t slash it before tossing it in the oven. The goal is a kind of perfect imperfection–a hard, thick cru...

Read…