What to do with not-so-good tomatoes

...per. Put them in a low oven–around 300F- 325F. They’ll need to cook a long time, maybe two hours or so. The exact cooking time depends on the size and moisture content of the tomatoes. So this is something to do when you’ve got other things going on in the kitchen–like maybe a pot of beans simmering on the stove–so you will be around and remember to look in on them. What you are trying to do is remove some of the liquid and concentrate the flavors...

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The Theme of a Great Garden

...nd the use of California native plants. The garden feels as if exists in a time before humans. It got me wondering how thematics would play out in a more modest home landscape. Perhaps, when it comes time to design a garden it would be useful to toss around a few abstract words and ideas to help unify the design vocabulary of the garden. Picking a theme or several related themes could make it easier when it comes to making plant and hardscpaping c...

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Wake Up and Fight

...e chasing clicks, I would have given up long ago. Almost all of the “urban homesteading” blogs like this one disappeared years ago. That’s the result of many factors. One is the rise of social media, as capital found a way to monetize posting and shift the fruits of that monetization away from creators and towards large companies like Meta (gag) and all the others: Twitter, TikTok, YouTube etc. I’m sorry to say that I bought into the optimism abou...

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