Shoemaking Advice?

...ave any of you made your own shoes? I’m looking for good resources on shoe making: books, videos, etc. I’d also love to hear stories of successes or failures or lessons learned. I’d like to make leather, soft-soled shoes as first project perhaps moccasins, perhaps something more structured. I have two books right now. One is Shoes for Free People, by David & Inger Runk, published in 1976 in Santa Cruz. As you might expect, it is highly groovy. And...

Read…

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...

Read…

Quick Breads

...olution has changed our minds on the previous paragraph, and we’re back to making sourdough. That being said, an occasional quick bread ain’t a bad thing: Quick breads are easy, involve no yeast or rising times, and are nearly foolproof, . [Erik here speaking in 2020: This is an incredibly offensive and stupid remark. I apologize. It’s the worst kind of cheap humor. It’s a humor not based on experience but, instead, just making fun of other people...

Read…

Sourdough Recipe #1 The Not Very Whole Wheat Loaf

...and rotate the loaf. Bake for another 15 to 20 minutes for a total of 40 to 45 minutes until the crust turns a dark brown. 13. Remove the loaf from the oven, but resist the urge to break into it. It’s still cooking and you could get a stomach ache from the still active wild yeasts. Let it cool down before slicing. There’s not much labor involved with making this bread especially if you’ve got a mixer, but it does require some scheduling. You’ll no...

Read…

Instant Soup Stock=Happy Flavor Bomb

...ause I want to. Back in 2013 I linked to this post by our friend Pascal on making instant soup stock with foraged greens: Wild Food Soup Stock. It’s great! But foraged greens have a short season here, and lately I’ve been using a more domestic recipe from the great blog Food in Jars: Homemade Vegetable Soup Concentrate. Check them out. You’ll see the ways in which they are similar. Basically you’re just taking all the tasty, aromatic parts of soup...

Read…