Solar Oven Triumph: Fluffy Egg Strata

...Sport solar oven. It’s an egg strata. I’ve never made a strata before, so making one in a solar oven seemed a bit risky, but I was rich in eggs and stale bread and the sun was out, so I decided to try. For those of you don’t know, an egg strata is a casserole-type dish, typically served at brunch, which is composed of bread, eggs, cheese, butter and milk. It is indeed a fat bomb. But you know what? Fat is not evil. My inspiration for this experim...

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Discover the Magic of Home Milling this Saturday

...l. Why To share the benefits of milling fresh flour at home. Benefits like making fresher healthier more nutritious foods for less money, while supporting the local economy, increasing food security and decreasing our impact on the environment. Where The King’s Roost in Silver Lake is LA’s first and only urban homesteading store and learning center. We believe it is the only brick and mortar store in the country that carries a full line of home gr...

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Quick Breads

...olution has changed our minds on the previous paragraph, and we’re back to making sourdough. That being said, an occasional quick bread ain’t a bad thing: Quick breads are easy, involve no yeast or rising times, and are nearly foolproof, . [Erik here speaking in 2020: This is an incredibly offensive and stupid remark. I apologize. It’s the worst kind of cheap humor. It’s a humor not based on experience but, instead, just making fun of other people...

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What You Can Do to Make Our Streets Safer

...can think of at least two simple things you can do to begin the process of making our cities more livable and safe, especially for our children and elders. Burn Your AAA Card The Automobile Club likes to hide behind the cheery road trip facade epitomized by their magazines and free travel advice. But behind the scenes they are a lobbying group as powerful and nefarious as the tobacco industry. They’ve never seen a road they don’t like and have spe...

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The #700 Bookshelf

...art. The #700 bookcase as seen in the 1909 catalog. My latest project was making a copy of Gustav Stickley’s #700 bookshelf, originally manufactured in 1904. The $30 price in the 1909 catalog would be around $900 today, not cheap considering that a good salary at that time was between $2,000 and $5,000 a year. In my cranky opinion the pre-WWI Arts and Crafts era marks the pinnacle of American design. It’s all downhill from this point. The #700 bo...

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