Cold brewed tisanes, teas and coffee: Your summertime best friends

...to use simple syrup. A taste of the wild Our friend Pascal, who is on our podcast this week, usually shows up at parties with a big jug of cold infusions of foraged plants. He talks about this in his book, The New Wildcrafted Cuisine. He uses whatever is in season at the time, an eclectic mix that may include wild mints, elderflowers, conifers like white fir and pine, herbs like black sage and berries of all sorts. Sometimes he adds less-wild ing...

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The Degrowth Paradigm

...hor of Radical Simplicity, Small Footprints on a Finite Earth and concludes with a visit to the radical degrowth activists of Catalan, Spain. To those of you who haven’t jumped on the podcast bandwagon yet, I’d suggest Ideas as a start. The episode I’m talking about, “The Degrowth Paradigm,” can be found here. Save Save Save...

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Tree Bondage

...you do a class announcement. Robert Kourik, our guest on episode 69 of our podcast, sent me an email that had me laughing and wishing that I lived in Northern California so that I could attend his upcoming talk: Tree Bondage: and solutions I’ll show dozens of misshaped, abused and tortured trees, from mangled roots, to poorly-tended trunks and grossly manipulated canopies. I will show photographs of trees in bondage and discuss healthy alternative...

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Of Love and Compressed Air

...of Low Tech Magazine creator Kris De Decker (a guest on episode 83 of our podcast). He just published two long articles on the history of compressed air, “History and Future of the Compressed Air Economy” and “Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage.” This is one of those topics that’s so boring as to be exciting and once you start thinking of the possibilities of compressed air you’ll find yourself, inappropriately, peppering...

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Three California Natives that Double as Culinary Herbs

...rbs. And a reminder that if you’re in a hurry you can dry herbs in a microwave by putting the leaves in one layer between two paper towels. Microwave for one minute and let the leaves cool. If they aren’t brittle, microwave for another minute. Pascal Baudar (a guest on episode 89 of the Root Simple Podcast) has a phenomenal herb blend that uses all three of these herbs combined with some garlic salt. I made a batch last week and have already used...

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