More on How to Make Clear Ice

June 2, 2017

Food

...amper English has done my work for me and carefully tested every clear ice making method and documented the results in painstaking detail on his entertaining and enlightening blog Alcademics. The winning method he suggests is the one I wrote about: freezing ice in a cooler (also known as “directional freezing”). The distilled water and hot water methods don’t work, according to English. I also learned that the enigmatic David Rees (author of a boo...

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What You Can Do to Make Our Streets Safer

Mr. Homegrown

April 13, 2018

Transportation

13 Comments

...can think of at least two simple things you can do to begin the process of making our cities more livable and safe, especially for our children and elders. Burn Your AAA Card The Automobile Club likes to hide behind the cheery road trip facade epitomized by their magazines and free travel advice. But behind the scenes they are a lobbying group as powerful and nefarious as the tobacco industry. They’ve never seen a road they don’t like and have spe...

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The Year We Gave Up Our Smart Phones

Mr. Homegrown

September 3, 2018

Thoughtstylings

19 Comments

...ve to eat is freeze dried Beef Stroganoff in a Martian prison of their own making. We used their stranding as an opportune moment to rid our culture of the things that were holding us back. My own personal smart phone addiction recovery path began back in 2018. I was building the most complex project I’ve ever attempted, a chest of drawers. It required intense concentration and I kept getting interrupted by the ping of text messages, junk phone ca...

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Tips on growing great garlic

Mr. Homegrown

September 12, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

8 Comments

...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...

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Kevin West’s Saving the Season

Mr. Homegrown

October 1, 2013

Food, Food Preservation, Reviews

8 Comments

...h. Full disclosure here: I’ve tasted a lot of West’s jams. I teach a bread making class at the Institute of Domestic Technology. After my bread demo West does a jam making session and I stick around to watch and, hopefully, filtch an extra jar. Those West jams are coveted items around the Root Simple household. What makes Saving the Season different from other preserving books is West’s masterful use of aromatics and alcohols. As he explains in th...

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