How to Cycle Safely

...to the door zone briefly (only while going very slowly). But for the most part you should stay out of it. It is impossible to predict if a door will open. Lane positioning is an art not a science. It comes with experience. At any given spot on a road I might be further to the left or right depending on what time of day it is, what the weather is like and the general “mood’ of the street. A good guide to getting the hang of how far to the left or r...

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There Will Be Kraut Part II–Full Day Hands-On Fermentation Workshop at the Greystone Mansion

...things fermented continues in spades by diving into a hands-on sauerkraut making session. You’ll make your own batch of sauerkraut and go home with a custom glass fermenting jar (included for each participant). We’ll move on to a traditional Korean kimchi recipe using easy to find ingredients as well as a walkthrough of selected authentic Korean ingredients for those of you ambitious fermentors. Lunch is included and will include delicious fermen...

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Planting a Mini-Orchard

...date 3/13/2011: I met Brad Lancaster last night and he told me that he and Art Ludwig no longer use the upside down bucket described in this post. The reason is that detergents can build up in the hole. In my experience the bucket was also an unnecessary step. While I have a clay soil, the hillside drains fairly well. A properly sized mulch basin should suffice to allow greywater to infiltrate. Also, the new generation of washing machines use a lo...

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What’s Your Everyday Carry?

...small match and a ball of wax soaked cotton as well as a magnesium fire starting tool. Unfortunately, part of the magnesium tool came unscrewed in my pocket and got lost (perhaps the fluid dynamicists in our audience can explain this common pocket phenomenon). But also, how often do I need to start a fire in Los Angeles? While arson is the only honest form of architectural criticism in a city full of Geoff Palmer atrocities, it’s not like I need...

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Plum Lemon Tomato Power’s Heirloom Tomato

...gardening efforts, we somehow mislaid the names of the tomatoes we planted making our reporting efforts incomplete. We do know the name of the wondrous plum lemon tomato pictured above, well worth planting again next year. It’s a meaty, sweet, yellow tomato delicious both fresh and dried. Allegedly the seeds for this tomato originally came from an elderly seed seller in a bird market in eastern Moscow which the Russian police have since shut down...

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