How to Make Great Pizza in a Home Oven

...High temperatures. You just can’t make good pizza in a home oven. Or so I used to think. This weekend I invited some friends over for an outdoor pizza party but much needed rain put a wrinkle in those plans. I remembered that Josey Baker had some instructions in his book on how to make pizza in a home oven, so I decided to give it a try. I’m happy to report that it works so well that I’m beginning to doubt why I should bother to spend three hours...

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An Early Resolution

...come in disposable cups. If I try to imagine how many disposable cups I’ve used in my life–say the earth (justly) vomited them all back at my feet–how high would the pile be? As big as my house? So I’m making a resolution. Instead of berating others, I’m declaring a personal moratorium on to-go cups–all disposable cups for both hot and cold drinks, actually, because why not? I banned plastic water bottles from my life long ago. Why it took so long...

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2014: The Year in Review

...handheld 2 meter/70 centimeter radio and a rooftop antenna, but I haven’t used it much other than to check in on a local net a few times. I may have to table my amateur radio activities in 2015 in order to focus on other, more pressing, projects. April Easter Lessons Kelly wrote about a troubled project involving dyeing eggs with natural materials. Natural dyes are a subject that interests us both, and I suspect we’ll revisit this topic in 2015....

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Grief is the pathway to action

...quiet. Where have the birds gone? The fish seem to have left that spot you used to fish at with your grandpa As you drive in the mountains you notice half the trees are turning brown Or maybe you grieve or things you don’t witness, but hear about, like the plastic gyres in the ocean, worldwide deforestation, those last four white rhinos in Africa, quietly grazing away the final days of their species, the polar bears swimming in circles. Often we d...

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Behold the bodkin

...OED on it, and it is a very English word, but its origins are obscure. It used to refer to several things: a dagger (he himself might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin), a long hair pin, an awl, and the meaning it has retained through today: a needle-like instrument with a blunt knobbed point, having a large (as well as a small) eye, for drawing tape or cord through a hem, loops, etc. It also had another meaning, which is totally fun: transf....

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