Timing Sourdough Feeding

April 6, 2020

...or is important if you want to get a decent sourdough bread: the amount of time between feeding your starter and making your dough. I keep a small amount of starter on hand since I bake, at most, twice a week under normal circumstances (Under quarantine I’m baking a lot more but the reasons for that would be the subject of another blog post). Just before I go to bed, the night before I’m going to make bread, I take a tablespoon of starer and add i...

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The Frog Notices It Is Getting Boiled

Mr. Homegrown

June 2, 2020

Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

Oops. It’s been a week of conflicting curfew alerts. Each time my phone buzzes with these alerts my already simmering anger boils over, mainly because I think that this mess we’re in could have been easily avoided. Rather than simply stew in my own anger this morning, I thought I’d sit through the Los Angeles Police Commission’s emergency Zoom meeting held, ostensibly, to address the unrest that’s taken place over past few days. The meeting remin...

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The New Homemade Kitchen

Mr. Homegrown

June 26, 2020

Fermentation, Food, Food Preservation, Recipes, Reviews

3 Comments

...scales and bomb proofs your pantry. Green coffee can sit around for a long time and knowing how to roast it is a useful skill in our current crappening. In short, this book is very quarantine friendly both in the sense of having skills handy when supply chains are broken and having something more productive to do than binging Netflix. In addition to coffee you’ll find chapters on pickles and preserves, baking, dairy, meat and fish, cocktails, ferm...

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Kelly’s Office Furniture in Progress

Mr. Homegrown

July 20, 2020

Design

5 Comments

...ast year on how to hand cut dovetails and have spent some of my quarantine time practicing this skill, which gets down to learning how to cut an angled line with a saw. It’s actually not that hard once you spend some hours practicing on scrap wood. Kelly did not like how long it took for me to make the bookshelf (made out of inexpensive beech wood, by the way) and requested that I put the cabinets together faster. I used birch plywood which was mo...

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The Difference Between Mulch and Compost

Mr. Homegrown

March 31, 2015

Gardening

2 Comments

...nning gag in the comic book Groo the Wanderer. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “mulch” called “compost” I’d be a wealthy blogger. Let’s set the record straight. The Oxford English Dictionary defines mulch as, Partly rotted plant material, etc.; (Hort.) loose material consisting of straw, decaying leaves, shredded cuttings and bark, etc., spread on soil or around or over a plant to provide insulation, protect from desiccation, and deter...

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