Common Sense for the New Times
Common Sense for the New Times
Tag food
Pickle Soup
Tips for making (firm) yogourt.
The Life and Death of Bun-bun.
Vertical farms: A bad solution to the wrong problem.
Sustainable means able to be sustained, and the alternative, then, is things that are unable to be sustained.⊕Bill Rees, the co-developer of Ecological Footprinting, says sustainability is like pregnancy. You either are or you aren’t, no sorta. You can read my…
Vertical farms: the greatest hope for cities, or a band-aid on a sucking chest wound?
I sometimes find myself making negative comments about vertical farming. This happened again today, and the facebook friend to whom I responded replied very openly with, “Well, what then? Green belts?” So rather than continue my terse and impatient crypticism…
How to make Sauerkraut or pickled vegetables the easiest and cheapest way possible (crocks are for holding umbrellas)
Review: The Market Gardener. Summary: Excellent.
The first piece of swag to come out of writing this blog hit my mailbox this spring, when I was asked to review Jean-Martin Fortier’s book The Market Gardener. Sadly, they did not also send me a broadfork. Carmen and I…
In which I get sweary about pre-grated cheese.
One of my comfort foods is whole-wheat macaroni with vegetables. Since I am a lazy cook and reluctant dishwasher I have always just grated cheese and sprinkled it on top of the noodles then stirred it into a clumpy and…
Being a treatise on Significant Innovations in Egg Pickling
Well over a decade ago, I owned a restaurant, and in the restaurant I sold pickled eggs. I also had a fully waxed handlebar moustache—so there are at least two reasons why I find hipsters to be Johnny-come-lately poseurs. Anyhow,…
My best loaf yet.
The slices of bread on my sandwich were not loaf-shaped, they were round—perfectly round—and it was bursting with alfalfa sprouts. Eaten by a young boy with long, wavy hair and often-repaired glasses, this circular sandwich was part of a pretty…
I don’t want salvation.
I watched a deer die this week. It took about ninety seconds, which is a lot longer than I hope for, and the deer fought hard to live. The shock, pain and fear it was experiencing as it struggled against…
How to make butter.
We occasionally get a gallon of fresh cow’s milk from a charming Jersey named Sultana; it is a deliciously heart-breaking reminder of hedonism lost. The milk is not homogenized so the cream floats on top and the consistency of the cream…
Dance of the Honey Bee—lovely slow-mo
When I collected my first swarm last year, I arrived at a well-manicured suburban home to find a cluster of bees the size of a Christmas Ham clumped on a branch about ten feet in the air. It is hard…
Peat or Coir? The correct answer is…?
As I say in my blogroll, TreeHugger is where I go to get enraged. In what should be an innocuous Top Nine Products for Healthy Soil post, I managed to flip my lid twice. Peat is bad and Coir is…