New Health Food Trends at the Natural Products Food Expo West

March 11, 2013

...y have some sort of wheat allergy. However, someone tell me why we have to label products like tomato sauce and raw chicken as being “gluten free?” Most new gluten free products, everything from pasta to crackers to power bars, use quinoa. The Natural Products Expo’s own trade publication noted that the exponential growth of quinoa consumption in the U.S. has created a situation in which the indigenous people of Peru can no longer afford their own...

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Compost and Pharmaceuticals

Mr. Homegrown

May 2, 2013

Composting, Gardening, Humanure, Straw Bale Gardening

17 Comments

...these questions. If you know of more please leave a link in the comments. A 2010 study looked at the degradation of salinomycin, used on chickens to prevent coccidiosis. The study concluded, On the basis of the results obtained in this study, it appears that the composting technique is effective in reducing salinomycin in manure. Another 2010 study looked at the composting of sewage sludge containing fluoroquinolones (broad spectrum antibiotics),...

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How to Organize a Small Workshop

Mr. Homegrown

November 3, 2017

Design

6 Comments

...tablets, permit me to share a few things I’ve learned about tiny workshop design: Put everything on wheels. Get some locking wheels at the hardware store and the workshop will be infinitely re-configurable. You can even roll everything outside when needed to work on large pieces or to deal with dust issues. Use Sketchup to figure out the best configuration. Most tools, cars and cabinets have been modeled for you by the Sketchup community. All you...

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How To Freeze Fruits and Vegetables

Mr. Homegrown

February 1, 2013

Food, Food Preservation

13 Comments

...eserve nutrients. But, when it comes to freezing fresh vegetables from the garden there is one important step: blanching. Blanching slows down enzymatic activity that can deteriorate the quality of what you freeze. How much to blanch depends on the vegetable in question. Thankfully there’s a handy publication from Oregon State University, Freezing Fruits and Vegetables, that covers blanching times and many of the other particulars in freezing food...

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How to save tomato seed

Mrs. Homegrown

September 19, 2013

Gardening, How-to, Miscellaneous, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening

14 Comments

...little tricky. You can’t just save the seed from any old vegetable in your garden and hope that it will yield plants like the parent. Cross-breeding is an issue. Professional seed savers use all sorts of sacks and screens and boxes to ensure that busy bees or flirtatious winds don’t make romance happen where it ought not. Otherwise you get acorn squash crossing with melons and who knows what not. It depends on the type of vegetable you want to sav...

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