Bike Lane Blocking, An Angry Rant and Something You Can Do

...xy and often politically unpalatable work of installing bus only lanes and making the city more pedestrian and bike friendly, seems to think that the future lies in a techno-optimist future of flying cars and private tubes as peddled by Elon Musk. Instead of improvements we could have right now (all a bus lane takes is a line of paint) we’re waiting for a future that will never come. I’ve held off writing this post for years but I can’t stay silen...

Read…

Foodcrafting 101

...Guinness Stout, liqueurs, orange flower water, coffee or fresh citrus zest. You’ll have an entire flavor bar™ of spices, sweeteners and herbs to pick from as you create your own signature mustard blend. INSTRUCTORS INCLUDE: Erik Knutzen: Co-author of The Urban Homestead and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World and a L.A. County Master Food Preserver Joseph Shuldiner: Institute Director, and author: Pure Vegan: 70 Recipes for Beauti...

Read…

Mead!

...liquid) which we used to take a reading of 15% on our finished must. When fermentation is complete we’ll take another reading. The difference between the two readings will be the percentage of alcohol in our mead. A big disclaimer here. We don’t know how well this recipe works, but we’ll let you all know. In the meantime, for those dying to get started, the National Honey Board has some free mead making instructions here (pdf). Lastly, in our sea...

Read…

Use Your Microwave as Dough Proofing Box

...it works great. There are reasons you might want to cool dough and prolong fermentation, either to develop flavor and/or to put off your baking time to a more convenient hour. Your proofing box and refrigerator thus become, to use an old person metaphor, like the fast forward and pause buttons on a VCR. Concluding note I’ve gotten back into bread baking after a pause, specifically making whole wheat breads. If you’d like to try baking yourself, at...

Read…

Homegrown Evolution in Chicago

...ter with: nettlesting@yahoo.com Erik will lead an informal presentation on Urban Homesteading in Los Angeles – focusing on his and his wife’s homegrown systems of adventurous experimentation of chickens, growing, greywater, brewing and more – some successful, some not so much! Copies of The Urban Homestead will be for sale. Many thanks to Nancy Klehm for arranging these events! See her website Spontaneous Vegetation for more info on other events a...

Read…