The modern woman-things to put in your apron pocket

...e and oh so functional. I’m often out and about in the yard and around the homestead and I find my apron a very useful accessory. An apron adds a flirty, feminine touch when worn over jeans and is a nice layer of protection for a dress. I tend to get very dirty and need a lot of pockets, so an apron is handy indeed. Whether I am at the farmer’s market, pulling weeds in the backyard or at the chicken coop, here are the top things you are likely to...

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The New Homemade Kitchen

...ioned bread baking, the IDT offered classes in mustard, cheese making, jam making, coffee roasting, cocktail crating and much more. Joseph gathered the recipes and collected wisdom of these classes into his posthumously published book The New Homemade Kitchen: 250 Recipes and Ideas for Reinventing the Art of Preserving, Canning, Fermenting, Dehydrating, and More just released this month by Chronicle. The section on cocktails is a good example of t...

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Learn to Build with Adobe

...town headquarters: Making Adobe: The next session of our monthly, half day Making Adobe class in Pioneertown is coming up on Sunday, August 21st. Just a couple minutes from both Sand to Snow National Monument and Joshua Tree National Park, we’ll spend Sunday providing a condensed introduction to making and building with adobe brick. Our final two session this year will be on September 25 and October 23th. Register here, bring your friends, make so...

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George Rector: M.F.K. Fisher’s Dirty Old Uncle

...p. Speaking of befuddled menfolk, Erik is quite fond of this passage about making Hollandaise sauce (from the chapter titled “A Touch of Eggomania”), not least because it has introduced the term “hen fruit” into our lives: For eggs Benedict, you need Hollandaise sauce, an additional contribution of the hen fruit to the pleasures of the palate, and to the confusion of cooks. Hold on to your hats and we’ll round that curve. Add four egg yolks, beate...

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Planting in a Post-Wild World

...with no tall species present. Woodland/shrubland relates to the typical suburban yard where trees and shrubs mix with lawn. The forest is for those lucky enough to have land with stands of trees. Planting in Post-Wild World is not a simple how-to book. In fact, there’s nothing simple about it at all– but it is very clear. Its goals are ambitious, and while it might seem like it was written for designers, it can be used by a determined home gardene...

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