SurviveLA Food Review: Mary Jane’s Farm Organic Buttery Herb Pasta

July 26, 2006

...tead of a foil pouch, which is nice). All you do is add 3/4 cup of boiling water, reseal the bag and wait for ten minutes. I used a Pepsi can stove to boil the water, incidentally. It cooked well, with only a couple of the elbow noodles escaping hydrating and ending as crunchy surprises on my fork. The pouch claims that it holds 1.5 servings: a Mary Jane’s Organics eccentricity. I scarfed the whole thing down without difficulty and I’m a girl. I t...

Read…

Getting started with worms

Mrs. Homegrown

August 29, 2014

Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture

8 Comments

...icompost adds nutrients and good bacteria to the soil and help soil retain water. Plants love it. In a worm bin, your garbage becomes black gold! Worm bins vs. compost piles While vegetable scraps can also be put into compost bins, not everyone has the space or the time or the physical strength to maintain a compost pile. Worm bins, though, are easy to maintain and can fit into every lifestyle, from a single person living in an apartment to a big...

Read…

Our Disastrous Summer Garden

Mr. Homegrown

September 15, 2015

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

37 Comments

...ed by climate change. Drought, of course, made everything worse. We had to water our already alkaline soil with alkaline water. Only the native plants and what we call the Biblical plants seem happy (e.g. the fig and the pomegranate). The drought and an extreme heat wave pushed everything in the garden to the edge–and a few over the edge: in the last month we abruptly lost some garden stalwarts, including a rosemary bush and a culinary sage. Despi...

Read…

A Prickly Situation

Mr. Homegrown

July 17, 2006

Food, Foraging

...pted to Southern California’s climate, that are both edible and don’t need watering. One of the most versatile is the prickly pear cactus, of which there are about a dozen varieties all under the Opuntia genus (Family Cactaceae). In the late spring the plant produces new leaves which can be harvested and eaten. Stores and street vendors sell them as “Nopolito”. Nopolito, tastes a bit like a slightly slimy green pepper and can be used in scrambled...

Read…

Behold the Ant Lion

Mrs. Homegrown

November 20, 2014

Animals, Insects, Nature Awareness

17 Comments

...have been made by a big man’s thumb. I might think it was made by dripping water, if there was ever any water anywhere in this dry land. The answer was “ant lion” — and I was the only one among them who did not know the answer. Ant lion??? It was such as strange conjunction of terms (see jackalope) that I thought they were pulling my leg. When I got home and checked the Internets, I realized that, as always, truth is stranger than fiction. The nam...

Read…