Stern Sprouted Wheat Vegan Cookie or Health Bar Type Things

...closest I’m going to get to dessert for a while. The recipe comes from the book, From the Wood-Fired Oven by Richard Miscovich, where the recipe is used as an example of what you can cook in a bread oven which has almost cooled off, because these bake at very low temps. Actually, they’d be good candidates for a solar oven. Or even dashboard cooking in the summer! There are four ingredients: sprouted wheat, raw almonds, dried fruit and a pinch of s...

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The Arroyo Co-op in Pasadena

Back in the 1970s the phone book for Los Angeles had dozens of food co-ops. Until just recently that number had dwindled to one (in Santa Monica), in a region of some 13 million people. Which is why I’m happy to help get the word out about the new Arroyo Co-op. If you’re interested in joining here’s the press release I was sent: When you shop at your local supermarket, do you feel like you really belong there? Do you wish you had an alternative –...

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Frida Paints Luther

...ing about people’s priorities in the 1930s. Kahlo liked to blur the boundaries between human consciousness, the vegetable and the animal. In her portrait of Burbank she touches on themes of life, death and transformation. You could write a book about what’s going on in this painting. Burbank’s work lives on inour backyards and orchards in the form of the fruit varieties he developed. I’ll view his Santa Rosa plum in our front yard differently afte...

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Are Bees Mammals?

...’s milk) These are all characteristics of mammals. Thiele inspiration is a book The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism , by Jürgen Tautz who calls bees,”the mammal in a thousand bodies.” Golden Hive. Thiele’s next point was that if we think of them as a mammal than we’re going to have a different relationship with them. Practically, this might mean different housing. If a bee is a mammal what they live in becomes their skin and fur. To ke...

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Hollywood always gets gardens wrong (I’m talking to you, Maze Runner)

...storical dramas, cannot somebody bother to glance at an art history survey book, and see what the visual of the period was, and make a faint attempt to replicate that style? Yes, only crusty old art history majors (ahem) are bothered by this, but heck, we’d tell you for free. Just give us a call. Run a couple of things past us. We don’t mind–it’s not like we’re employed or anything. The set designers do an okay job bringing in random paintings tha...

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