One Secret for Delicious Soup–A Parmesan Cheese Rind

...you are already using meat or bacon fat or the like in your soup, but for vegetable-based dishes, it really adds a nice touch. As to how much rind you should add, it’s kind of hard to say, since rinds vary in thickness. I don’t think it’s necessary to use a whole rind per pot–I usually break my rinds into two halves. The average chunk that goes in my pots is probably less than an inch high by maybe 3 inches long. It doesn’t really matter how much...

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The Strange World of Artificial Plants

...s a Hollywood art director, grabbed me late one evening to help her fake a vegetable garden for a movie. From her I that learned that their are businesses in Hollywood that do nothing other than provide fake plants. Not just flowers, but everything from corn to . . . hemp. Having a bad year with your tomatoes? Green Set Inc. will set you up with some fake ones: They even have a very large (and suspiciously shiny) fake zucchini: But I think my favo...

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California’s Drought and What To Do About It

...less water and encourage beneficial wildlife. I consider them part of the vegetable garden, in a way. I just made a major change to our laundry to landscape greywater system–more on this in another post. I’ve consulted historical irrigation data to more intelligently program our drip irrigation system. Keep in mind that 77% of California’s water use goes to agriculture (the media tends to forget this). Residential water use is a small part of the...

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Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomato

...s a wild-type tomato that grows without supplemental irrigation. Many avid vegetable gardeners have probably had the experience of tomatoes that reseed and grow without care. In my experience these hardy rogue tomatoes are invariably on the cherry side of the tomato size spectrum. This makes sense as the tomato’s wild ancestor is much smaller than modern beefsteak varieties. Matt’s Wild Cherry was obtained in Hidalgo, Mexico by Teresa Arellanos de...

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