Chicken Goes to Hollywood

August 8, 2009

...hildren and chicken aficionados of all ages. Since her chickens reside on the East Coast, Peckerella stepped in to play ambassador. ‘Pecky’ as she is often called, did a wonderful job and was very well behaved, allowing many children to pet her and sitting patiently during the book reading. Her next appearance will be at a reading of Tillie’s story at Chevalier’s books in Larchmont Village this Sunday, August 9th, from 11-1. If you are in the area...

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The Human-Powered Home: Choosing Muscles Over Motors

Mr. Homegrown

June 16, 2009

Bikes

...of our favorite appliances take a hell of a lot more energy than pedal power can provide), but you will be able to grind grain, press apples, operate a sewing machine, and shell nuts. Dean’s book tells you how to harness human power in clear step-by-step instructions. Read our complete review here. Read excerpts from the book on Dean’s website....

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Build Your Own Furniture

Mr. Homegrown

October 27, 2006

Design

5 Comments

...zon, but available at the L.A. Public Library. Most of the designs in this book would work well with found materials and scraps. What we appreciate most about this book and others like it, that we will discuss in future posts, is the economical use of common materials. A good example of this efficiency are these handsome stools — one sheet of plywood will make eight stools. Here are the instructions from the Sunset book: Simple, versatile, and ine...

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Worm Composting

Mr. Homegrown

July 25, 2006

Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture

2 Comments

...ms Eat My Garbage” by Mary “Worm Woman” Applehof. Now we haven’t read this book, but having tried worm composting you will definitely need some advice either from the “internets” or from a book. We tried worm composting here in the compound garden a few years ago and found the process somewhat difficult. Unlike our present lazy composting methods, worm composting requires a certain amount of time and effort. When you start a worm composting system...

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My Big Fat Greek Squash

Mr. Homegrown

September 17, 2009

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

13 Comments

...Vegetarian (thanks to Bruce of the Green Roof Growers for suggesting this book). Bittman’s spicy winter squash galette recipe is here on MSNBC along with a video of him making it. I’ll note that the online recipe is different from the one in the book which calls for a longer baking time. My galette was in the oven for over an hour, but I did not cook the squash as long in the frying pan as Bittman does in the video. I’m sure either way will work,...

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