Making the Shed Great Yet Again

February 17, 2020

Here’s a picture from May of 1999 showing our late doberman Spike guarding me while I worked on our then 90 now 100 year old shed. Guess what I’m doing over 20 years later? Working on the same shed. Me in 1999. In 2020 I need glasses. The shed has gone through two previous improvement battles starting with shoving a foundation under it, electrification and strengthening the floor followed by a somewhat misguided attempt at insulation and ceiling...

Read…

Eating the Void: On Making a Raw Café Gratitude Chocolate Hazelnut Pie

Mr. Homegrown

September 15, 2021

Food

10 Comments

I have a small collection of odd cookbooks that have, for the most part, gone unused which is probably a good thing. One that’s collected dust for years is I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Café Gratitude. Friends who have been to this oh-so-California restaurant say that’s it’s good while simultaneously a parody of itself. As the intro to the cookbook notes, The Café Gratitude menu gives you the opportunity to start practicing saying somet...

Read…

Allium ursinum

Mr. Homegrown

April 2, 2008

Gardening

1 Comment

...bears and wild boar. People can eat em’ too, with both the bulb and leaves making a tasty addition to a number of dishes (see a detailed report on Allium ursinum in the Plants for a Future website). Favoring semi-shade, Allium ursinum thrives in moist, acidic soil–forest conditions, in other words. In short, not appropriate for our climate in Los Angeles, but folks in the northwest might consider planting some. Like all members of the Allium speci...

Read…

Homegrown Evolution Food Review: Backpacker’s Pantry Huevos Rancheros

Mr. Homegrown

October 11, 2006

Preparedness

1 Comment

.... While this product has an impressive shelf life and ease of preparation, making it appropriate for emergency food supplies, we’ve had better freeze dried entrees. Our fellow campers had the same reaction to the visual look of the cooked and re-hydrated product: dog vomit. The taste wasn’t all that bad, but it had the overly salty and questionably seasoned feeling of almost all dehydrated foods. Imagine eating just the seasoning packet from a bow...

Read…

Build a Solar Dehydrator

Mr. Homegrown

October 1, 2008

Appropriate Technology, Preparedness, Solar

22 Comments

...several years ago and have used it each season for tomatoes, figs and for making dried zucchini chips. You can find plans for this “Appalachian Dehydrator”, designed by Appalachian State University’s Appropriate Technology Program, in the February/March 1997 issue of Home Power Magazine. The February/March 1999 issue of Home Power features a refinement of this plan, but we just built the original design and it works fine. The original plans and i...

Read…