Moldy Grapes!

...ass, in the dark, is essential for protecting those volatile oils, but the herbs really have to be crumbly dry before they go in jars. By the way, the secret to a good chamomile harvest is constant picking. Don’t be afraid to pick the flowers. The more you pick, the faster it will make more flowers. Like, overnight. I swear. Just pinch the heads off. And you use the whole flower, dry or fresh, to make tea. If a little stem gets in there too, it’s...

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We’ve taken the flowers out of our hair

Homegrown Revolution is back from San Francisco with a couple of random observations from our trip: 1. The picture above of a gas cap spotted in the Mission District demonstrates, that even in a bike and mass transit friendly city many folks take their cars a little too seriously. Let’s remember folks, we suspect that Jesus rides two wheels and takes the bus and does indeed look anguished every time we open the gas cap. 2. We took our bike with u...

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Big List of Earth-Friendly (homemade, compostable, recyclable, no-plastic) Holiday Decorations

...wreath Re-purpose old jewelry directly as tree ornaments, or use pieces in making other ornaments (loose beads, pins, chain, etc.) Tie scraps of pretty cotton ribbon into bows on tree limbs Make paper chains Sugared flowers, leaves, berries, etc. White sugar adds a little natural bling to things Milkweed pods glued into star shapes Bay leaves glued into wreaths and stars. Paper cones with raffia hangers filled with…sweets? berries? Blown eggs, esp...

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Eating the Void: On Making a Raw Café Gratitude Chocolate Hazelnut Pie

I have a small collection of odd cookbooks that have, for the most part, gone unused which is probably a good thing. One that’s collected dust for years is I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Café Gratitude. Friends who have been to this oh-so-California restaurant say that’s it’s good while simultaneously a parody of itself. As the intro to the cookbook notes, The Café Gratitude menu gives you the opportunity to start practicing saying somet...

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I Spent a Year Making a Bed

How’s that for a click bait title? But I really did spend almost a year on this with most of that time eaten up teaching myself how to do marquetry and inlay work. As I mentioned before, my first attempts didn’t go well and I spent a lot of time searching for advice on how to do this particular style of Art Nouveau work that almost nobody does anymore. Sanding and finishing metal and wood right next to each other also proved difficult and I’m not...

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