George Rector: M.F.K. Fisher’s Dirty Old Uncle

...p. Speaking of befuddled menfolk, Erik is quite fond of this passage about making Hollandaise sauce (from the chapter titled “A Touch of Eggomania”), not least because it has introduced the term “hen fruit” into our lives: For eggs Benedict, you need Hollandaise sauce, an additional contribution of the hen fruit to the pleasures of the palate, and to the confusion of cooks. Hold on to your hats and we’ll round that curve. Add four egg yolks, beate...

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Interview With Apartment Gardener Helen Kim

...onions whenever I make hot soup with noodles. And, for awhile there, I was making pasta with Swiss chard and mushrooms (with garlic and a bit of butter) just about every day! The mustard greens I like to have with my scrambled eggs… or, of course, for some pizzazz in any salad. I pounded the heck out of some dried stevia yesterday morning and added it to my coffee… and was surprised at how sweet it was. The mint is great to slice up and just throw...

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RIP Chef Ernest Miller and Dr. Tracy McFarland

...zabeth McFarland. Both were guests on previous episodes of the Root Simple podcast. I had the great privilege of taking chef Miller’s Master Food Preserver training. Chef Miller’s knowledge of food preservation and safety was encyclopedic. Whenever I had a question I’d send Ernie an email. He was an accomplished chef, teacher, Navy veteran and a kind and gracious person who volunteered countless hours of his time. There is no replacement for him....

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A Victorian Life

A conversational tangent on our podcast this week, in which we mentioned Victorian interiors, prompted Root Simple reader Misti to leave a link to a blog post about Dennis Severs’ amazing Victorian house in London, Dennis Severs was a Californian who left the land of palm trees and bright tan landscapes and came to London in the late 1960s. After giving up on studying law and driving a horse-drawn carriage, in 1979 he bought a derelict eighteenth...

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More on Federico Tobon

...terviewing the always creative and ever resourceful Federico Tobon for the podcast. Federico put up a blog post going into more detail on some of the things we talked about during the podcast, specifically the type of CNC router he uses (the ShapeOko 2 ), his social media rules, a video proving that he’s trained his cats (!), his hand sewn bike messenger bag and a shot of the LA Eco Village rooftop beehive. We talked for hours before and after rec...

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