Physalis pruinosa a.k.a. “Ground Cherry”

...names get so confusing. The back of the Tompson & Morgan seed package mis-labels this plant as the “Cape Gooseberry” (“Cape Gooseberry” is actually the very similar Physalis peruviana). Physalis pruinosa is part of a genus Physalis of the nightshade or Solanaceae family, which includes edible plants such as tomatoes and potatoes, and psychotropic plants such as datura and tobacco. Many plants of the nightshade family combine edibility and toxicit...

Read…

Fallen Fruit

...nothing to lose but your hunger They also have a set of handy maps of publicly accessible fruit in a couple of neighborhoods and a video for those who missed the fun last night. Rumor has it they will be doing a jam making session sometime this summer and SurviveLA will be there. Now we just need another collective of clever revolutionaries to deal with LA’s other great street resource–abandoned mattresses and couches....

Read…

An open letter to Trader Joes

...moved the rooster since that would signify that these eggs are fertilized, making us think that your package design folks were snoozing during their high school biology classes. We replaced the picturesque barn with a windowless industrial shed to show the most prevalent housing for poultry and, more than likely, where these cage free eggs came from. The family poultry farm alluded to in your cover art has long since been replaced by huge industri...

Read…

Mead!

...g. The difference between the two readings will be the percentage of alcohol in our mead. A big disclaimer here. We don’t know how well this recipe works, but we’ll let you all know. In the meantime, for those dying to get started, the National Honey Board has some free mead making instructions here (pdf). Lastly, in our search for mead information, we kept coming across ads for chain mail and peasant pants, and figured out that for some reason me...

Read…