Choosing the Perfect Tortilla Press

...2 inch press as small tortillas are used in authentic Mexican street food. Making corn tortillas is much simpler than I expected. All you do is get masa harina (a limed corn flour), mix it roughly 50/50 with water and let the dough rest for a half hour to an hour. Next, you roll the masa into little 2 inch balls and press them between a plastic bag inserted into the tortilla press. The last step is to heat them on the stove for one minute on each...

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060 Eric of Garden Fork Returns

...we’ve had Eric on and in this episode he discusses tapping maple trees and making syrup, grilling steaks on coals, crowd funding, pie crusts and meditation apps. Here’s the rundown: Planting crops in a cold climate in the late summer Tapping sugar maples Building an evaporator for making maple syrup Earth Eats Podcast Cooking “Eisenhower” steaks on coals Crowd funding Amanda Palmer Ted Talk Pie crusts Meditation with the Headspace app New anchor D...

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Josey Baker’s Awesome Adventure Bread (gluten free!)

...’s foolproof. If you have bread baking anxieties, just leave those behind. Making this “bread” is easier than making cookies. In texture, Adventure Bread could belong to that camp of dense Nordic/Germanic breads, like Vollkornbrot, but its nutty nature sets it apart. The only thing I don’t love about it is the pumpkin seeds–I don’t like their slippery texture so much in this context. Next time I may switch those out. I’m going camping this weekend...

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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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Instant Soup Stock=Happy Flavor Bomb

...ause I want to. Back in 2013 I linked to this post by our friend Pascal on making instant soup stock with foraged greens: Wild Food Soup Stock. It’s great! But foraged greens have a short season here, and lately I’ve been using a more domestic recipe from the great blog Food in Jars: Homemade Vegetable Soup Concentrate. Check them out. You’ll see the ways in which they are similar. Basically you’re just taking all the tasty, aromatic parts of soup...

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