Earth Building Classes!

...e on site by students using native soil, and they’ve been baking bread and making pizza with ingredients grown on-site! It was great to work with such an enthusiastic group – cooking with dirt is more than mud pies! Got something going on?: Drop us a line! We’re anxious to hear about new projects, preservation efforts, classes and folks doing recreational or professional adobe work in California. There’s a lot of people in our community that we ha...

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Instant Soup Stock=Happy Flavor Bomb

...ck base. I love this stuff. I use it all the time. It’s one of my favorite cooking staples. I want you to love it, too. What do you do with it? Well, we all know that stock makes everything taste better, and I do make and freeze stock, but that is a bit of a chore, and I end up being stingy with my stock, considering a recipe and wondering whether it is “stock worthy.” When you have instant stock in the fridge, you don’t have to hold back. Just sl...

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Mallow (Malva parviflora) an Edible Friend

...into a green sauce and use the leaves as a substitute for grape leaves for making dolmas. Modern Mexicans also make a green sauce with the leaves. If any of you readers have recipes, please send them along. If that ain’t enough, the mucilaginous nature of the plant can be exploited by making a decoction of the leaves and roots to use as a shampoo, hair softener, and treatment for dandruff. And yet, like so many other gardening books, the oh-so-bou...

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Worth Doing From Scratch: Corn Tortillas

...works great but my Mexicano friends in the know suggested a wooden press. Making masa from scratch is a huge amount of work and I’ve done just fine with supermarket masa harina. As I like to measure dry ingredients by weight I’ve figured out that for enough tortillas for four people you need to mix 250 grams of flour with 300 grams of water. Cook as many tortillas at once as you can. I can do three at a time on our stove. Cooking one at a time ta...

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Nance Klemn is in Los Angeles and She’s Teaching Classes!

...in the park below to make tinctures using vinegar, alcohol, and glycerin. Making tinctures is easy and preserves the essences of the plants for use as food and medicine. Plants have much to give us and so does Nance — you will go home with vinegar mother to make your own vinegars, and several tinctures. Cost is $45 and space is limited to 15 participants, so put it on your calendar and RSVP now! I will send out directions and address for mailing...

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