L’hamd markad – Preserved Salted Lemons

...week by mooching some lemons off of a friend’s tree and preserving them by making one of the essential ingredients of Moroccan food, L’hamd markad or preserved salted lemons. L’hamd markad is easy to make. Here’s a recipe from Cooking at the Kasbah by Kitty Morse: 12 or more unblemished organically grown Meyer or other lemons, scrubbed Sea salt fresh lemon juice as needed Pat lemons dry. Cut a thin dime-sized piece from both ends of each lemon. Se...

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Humanure Dry Toilet Made From a Milk Crate

...ble when you sit on them. For these reasons I designed a sturdy dry toilet making use of a scavenged milk crate. Even if the idea of humanure grosses you out (and it’s definitely the most controversial subject in our book), our milk crate toilet would be great for camping, emergencies or your remote cabin. Putting this toilet together takes just a few minutes. First, find a milk or beer crate and a five gallon bucket. Make sure that the crate you...

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A Day of the Dead Altar

...ure, such thoughts have been considered morbid, even unhealthy, for a long time–but that is changing. This year I felt ambitious, so built a much bigger altar, or ofrenda, than usual. Actually, the cats made me do it. Given access to the altar, they’d eat the flowers (ending up muerto themselves as a result, no doubt) and bat the rest of the objets to the ground. For the safety of the cats and my treasures, the entire surface needed to be so tight...

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Sensuous Space: How to Create Romantic, Seductive and Sensuous Settings

...he many pages of charts, spreadsheets and graphs. We’re 30 pages in by the time we see our first hot tub. The power nexus of the erotic panopticons in this book are, naturally, your disco control centers because your house must have its own private discotheque. I don’t know how you keep the blow from gumming up the electronics. Of course, such idiosyncratic spaces are the domain of the ultra-wealthy who can afford serial remodeling. Reznikoff note...

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New Phoebe Update/Question

...maybe even angry with us. She’s given me a few baleful looks with those yellow eyes. This behavior is worrisome to us because while we’re willing to do whatever we can to give her time, we want her time to be good. And so far, it’s been really good time. But we don’t want to be instrumental in keeping her alive in a frail, zombie-like state. That’s no life for a cat....

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