2014: The Year in Review

December 29, 2014

...eatly reduced my sugar intake overall and I’m more conscious of sugar when making decisions at the grocery store (it’s in everything!). Personally, I plan on revisiting the sugar issue. My new fresh, homemade muesli habit (thanks to the Komo FlicFloc) has allowed me to completely eliminate sugar for breakfast. June Hipster Compost and How to Make Stock In June I pondered local sources for compostable materials (but did not compost hipsters, as som...

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grub

Mr. Homegrown

October 2, 2009

Animals, Chickens, Composting

11 Comments

...evening! Here’s a video on grub growin’ complete with a dramatic musical conclusion: The crank in me has to add that simple ideas like becoming a grub cowboy are more exciting, and have greater potential than all the Priuses and algae fuel schemes combined. Growing grubs is an activity many of us have done accidentally. Making use of those grubs is just a matter of inserting ourselves into one of nature’s clever recycling schemes....

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What You Can Do to Make Our Streets Safer

Mr. Homegrown

April 13, 2018

Transportation

13 Comments

...ve never seen a road they don’t like and have spent the past hundred years making our cities into dangerous traffic sewers (see this article). Their lobbyists have a seat on municipal traffic commissions and they have the ear of our politicians. Thankfully there’s an alternative. If you want roadside assistance you can sign up for the Better World Club or just use the towing service offered by your insurance company. The tow trucks all come from t...

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Everything Must Go: Tidying Up at the Root Simple Compound

Mrs. Homegrown

January 9, 2015

Cleaning, Domesticus, Tidying up

36 Comments

...oint we remembered a book one of our readers mentioned, and which has been making the publicity rounds of late, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by the tidying consultant Marie Kondo (aka KonMari–her method is called the KonMari Method). She’s from Japan, where people have the same hearty consumerist impulses as we do here in the U.S., but considerably less space for storage. When I first read about the book, I understood the gist of it, but...

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Mallow (Malva parviflora) an Edible Friend

Mr. Homegrown

February 21, 2008

Food, Foraging

23 Comments

...into a green sauce and use the leaves as a substitute for grape leaves for making dolmas. Modern Mexicans also make a green sauce with the leaves. If any of you readers have recipes, please send them along. If that ain’t enough, the mucilaginous nature of the plant can be exploited by making a decoction of the leaves and roots to use as a shampoo, hair softener, and treatment for dandruff. And yet, like so many other gardening books, the oh-so-bou...

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