Tips on growing great garlic

...f they appear. The flowers pull energy from the plant that is better spent making big cloves. The flowers are also edible: some farmers are actually making more money selling the flowers as culinary exotics. Growing garlic in hot climates I’ve had mixed success growing garlic in Los Angeles. It turns out I was growing the wrong varieties. Most garlics appreciate cold weather, including some time spent under a blanket of snow. For hot climates you...

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Shoemaking Advice?

...ave any of you made your own shoes? I’m looking for good resources on shoe making: books, videos, etc. I’d also love to hear stories of successes or failures or lessons learned. I’d like to make leather, soft-soled shoes as first project perhaps moccasins, perhaps something more structured. I have two books right now. One is Shoes for Free People, by David & Inger Runk, published in 1976 in Santa Cruz. As you might expect, it is highly groovy. And...

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Saturday Linkages: A Mega-Reference for Homesteaders

...teaders CD3WD: A Mega-Reference for Homesteaders http://brinkoffreedom.net/homesteading/cd3wd-mega-reference-homesteaders/?utm_source=feedly … BreadStorm http://www.farine-mc.com/2013/09/breadstorm.html … Get Fit Like a Wild Man: A Primer on MovNat http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheArtOfManliness/~3/6JaxlN5A7Kc/story01.htm … Tooth Fairy goes pneumatic http://hackaday.com/2013/09/13/tooth-fairy-goes-pneumatic/ … Making Nikola Tesla a Saint Makes Us...

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Kevin West’s Saving the Season

...h. Full disclosure here: I’ve tasted a lot of West’s jams. I teach a bread making class at the Institute of Domestic Technology. After my bread demo West does a jam making session and I stick around to watch and, hopefully, filtch an extra jar. Those West jams are coveted items around the Root Simple household. What makes Saving the Season different from other preserving books is West’s masterful use of aromatics and alcohols. As he explains in th...

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Hoshigaki Season

...ime to make hoshigaki, a Japanese delicacy made by hanging peeled persimmons up in a window to dry. Hoshigaki are chewy and subtly sweet. The texture of hoshigaki is different than what you would get if you just put persimmons in a dehydrator. And if all goes right the sugar comes to the surface making it look like the fruit has been dipped in powdered sugar. If you can find them in a Japanese market they are extremely expensive. And the ones I sa...

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