Bread Camp at the Greystone Mansion

...a Baking of the Loaves Instructors Include: Erik Knutzen: Co-author of The Urban Homestead and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World, co-founder of the Los Angeles Bread Bakers collective and a L.A. County Master Food Preserver Joseph Shuldiner: Institute Director and author: Pure Vegan: 70 Recipes for Beautiful Meals and Clean Living Carmi Paulson: Carmi trained at Le Cordon Bleu, London where she received a Grand Diplôme in Patiss...

Read…

Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

...t porch. The day turned out to be cloudy and cool, so I don’t believe that solar energy aided my cause. Then, I ended up leaving the pot out all night long. In the morning some of the Oxalis had turned olive, other parts were still bright green. So I decided it was not done and put it on the stove, bringing it to a bare simmer as described for the direct heat method. In the meanwhile, I rose above my lazy half-assery and scoured my fabric–two whit...

Read…

Airing Our Dirty Laundry

...an average of .22 therms of natural gas per load at our gas company Sempra Energy’s August rate of 59 cents per therm, by using our clothes line we achieve the admittedly not too impressive savings of 17 cents per load. If we had an electric dryer we figure that the cost would be about 44 cents per load if the dryer consumed four kilowatts for a 45 minute spin. And remember that when you use electricity in Los Angeles, thanks to the Department of...

Read…

Breaking News

...foreground of the picture above–laid her first egg–that is, our very first homestead egg. Go Stewpot! Of course this event would happen when Mr. Homestead is out of town & in possession of the camera. The lay site was a difficult to access cranny behind the coop. It may not have been photograph-able anyway, but I will report that the egg was deposited quite attractively in a shallow bowl of yellow and brown leaves. I got it while it was still warm...

Read…