A Day of the Dead Altar

October 30, 2015

...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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Essential System #3 – Sew Your Own Damn Clothes

Mr. Homegrown

October 6, 2006

Domesticus

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...search for the good life onto futuristic A.I.s we could actually take the time to fulfill those goals, here and now, in the present company of our friends and lovers. In short it’s time to step away from the virtual world of the computer for a few evenings every month and fire up the very non-virtual Singer sewing machine. We did this a few years ago and managed to produce the rather unattractive and two sizes too big shirt that you see above. It...

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Los Angeles: Swag Town USA

Mr. Homegrown

August 10, 2006

Bikes, Thoughtstylings

...beat on the bottom of the UFO. Even then, the doves left slowly, one at a time, for what seemed like a half hour while all the cynical types in attendance stood around trying not to laugh. Similarly today’s Bike Town USA event ended not with a bang but with a whimper – the thirty or so contest winners who bothered to attend shuffled off to load their bikes into their SUVs and drove home where, we suspect, many of the bikes will just sit in the ga...

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Going to Seed

Mrs. Homegrown

June 24, 2016

Back to the Garden, Gardening, Nature Awareness, Vegetable Gardening

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...plant of any type goes to seed. They taste like radishes, pretty much, sometimes they’re sweeter, sometimes they’re spicier. Radish pods are both a bonus crop and a fine consolation prize, because even if your radish roots end up puny or woody or otherwise disappointing, you can always eat the pods. They’re best fresh, picked a handful at a time as a snack or to put in a salad, but you can lactoferment or pickle them, too, using pretty much any pi...

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Cold brewed tisanes, teas and coffee: Your summertime best friends

Mrs. Homegrown

July 25, 2016

Food, Foraging, Herbs

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...is book, The New Wildcrafted Cuisine. He uses whatever is in season at the time, an eclectic mix that may include wild mints, elderflowers, conifers like white fir and pine, herbs like black sage and berries of all sorts. Sometimes he adds less-wild ingredients, like lemons or honey. He leaves all these things swirling around in the jug at table, so that the sight of the infusion is almost as arresting as the taste. Pascal’s beautiful infusions sh...

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