Food Preservation Disasters

...me preservation projects. Some of the recipes I tried were from unfamiliar books and dubious websites. Some sources I’ve come to trust: The National Center for Home Food Preservation’s website. Kevin West’s book Saving the Season: A Cook’s Guide to Home Canning, Pickling, and Preserving . Between those two sources I’ve got just about all the recipes I need. One Ring to rule them all When you’re done processing jars and they’ve cooled down, remove...

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Why You Should Avoid Staking Trees

...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,...

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Defining a Garden’s Purpose

...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...

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How to Bake a Traditional German Rye Bread

...he starter First build: take one tablespoon of mature starter and add it to 50 grams of rye flour and 50 grams of room temperature filtered water. Let sit for between 8 to 12 hours at room temperature. Second build: add 75 grams of rye flour and 75 grams of room temperature filtered water to the first build. Let sit for 8 to 12 hours at room temperature. You will end up with 250 grams of rye sourdough starter to use in your dough. Mixing, proofing...

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Happy Mayan Apocalypse!

...s doomsday thinking, I think it would be best just to quote Greer from his book Apocalypse Not: there’s at least a chance that the upcoming failure of the 2012 prophecy might encourage people to take a hard and skeptical look at the apocalypse meme itself, to recognize that longing for the annihilation of most of humanity has no place in an authentic spirituality, and accept that our happiness as human beings depends on how we choose to live our l...

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