Gourmet Foraging and Advanced Acorn Processing

...g been interested in acorns, knowing that they were the staple food of the native people who lived here, and I’ve gathered and processed them before. However, once I have the acorn meal, I’ve never known exactly what to do with it. It’s highly nutritious, but I thought (wrongly!) that it was somewhat bland, and all I could do was incorporate acorn meal into baked goods. This weekend, however, I’ve had my eyes opened to the possibilities, thanks to...

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Book Review: The Urban Bestiary

...t these animals–these pests which overturn our garbage cans, scare off the native birds, eat our cats or scare the bejeezus out of us on the porch late at night–but we don’t, not really. We see what we want to see and understand very little. This book goes a long way toward filling in that knowledge gap. And with knowledge comes understanding–and maybe even peace. With some understanding, we can appreciate for the bits of wildness our animal neigh...

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Monday Linkages: The Blob, Urine Soaked Acorns

...3/09/the-labyrinth-project-beginning.html … Homesteading weirdness 1859: A native delicacy – acorns pickled in human urine http://shar.es/Kkb0q How Japanese honeybees switch to ‘hot defensive bee ball’ mode when threatened http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/japanese-honeybee-hot-defensive-bee-ball-asian-hornet … The “Queen of Green”? You be the Judge by Susan Harris http://gardenrant.com/2013/09/the-queen-of-green...

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Straw Bale Gardens

Tasha Via’s straw bale garden. Michael Tortorello (who profiled us when Making It came out) is one of my favorite writers covering the home ec/gardening subjects we discuss on this blog. He had an article last week in the New York Times, “Grasping at Straw” on straw bale gardening. We’ve very tempted to give the practice a try in our backyard. Why? We have lead and zinc contaminated soil so growing veggies in the ground is questionable. We live o...

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