Yesterday, as I chopped, dropped, and tried to cram just a few more blueberry bushes into my garden, it was obvious. The apple blossoms, the eager tips of asparagus, and the carpet of germinating calendula made it undeniable. Spring is here. If you are a gardener and you do not see magic in the ripe swelling of…
How To Make Corned Beef Brisket At Home
Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, it’s time for another giant cured meat tutorial. Our cured meat of focus? Why, corned beef brisket, or course! As you certainly know, there is no corn in corned beef. Originally corned beef was cured with chunky rock salt. Someone thought those nuggets of salt looked like corn…
How To Simplify Your Life With A Single Word
It’s 5:30 PM as a write this, and so far today I have received 17 different fully formed “opportunities” for me to give my time, influence or social capital away (for free, naturally). Throw in a looming mountain of laundry and an inconveniently timed dead car battery and it all adds up to the feeling my husband and…
Simple Creamy Braised Cabbage
If I had to limit myself forever more to a single vegetable, I could first cry out at the injustice of it all, and then grudgingly pick cabbage. I know of no crop more versatile, delicious, adaptable and healthy. This recipe showcases cabbage’s comfort-food side. Slow braised with onions and cream, it ends up sweet…
Easy Guinness Chocolate Cake for St. Patrick’s Day
My maternal grandmother was born and raised in England, and though she lived in the U.S. for decades, her Union Jack pride never flagged. Commemorative plates of Princess Diana decorated her walls, and she insisted on driving north to Vancouver, B.C. periodically to buy tea. “You see,” she insisted firmly, “there is no decent tea in this country.” Every…
7 Simple, Delicious Ways To Use Lemon Peel
I am such a sucker for citrus. If I didn’t hate temperatures over 73 degrees I’d move someplace where I could have my own huge lemon tree in the backyard and spend all day figuring out ways to use bushels of lemons. As it is, I have to buy my citrus, so I try to get as…
Ultra-light Limoncello
We’ve got a few more weeks of prime citrus season. We’ve already made lemon curd, salted lemons and citrus cleaning spray. It’s party time. Let’s make limoncello! A traditional southern Italian digestif, limoncello is usually served ice cold from tiny little glasses. Traditional limoncello often manages to be both too bitter and too sweet for…
Turn A Mason Jar Into A Twine Holder With This Easy Kitchen Hack
I’ve been tying a lot of stuff up lately. Must be that 50 Shades of Grey cultural zeitgeist thing working on me. If you want to make all your kitchen bondage tasks (everything from trussing a beef tenderloin to draining your homemade ricotta) far easier, make yourself a DIY twine holder from a mason jar. This is the simplest kitchen hack…
Get Your Garden Organized This Year: 2015 Garden Planner Available Now
Maximizing my harvest of homegrown veg is this awesome ever-changing puzzle. For over a decade, I’ve been assembling and reassembling the pieces, trying to find the key to being the best gardener I can while getting the most from every square foot of my garden. There are two things I’m sure of. The first is…
22 Signs You Are Desperate To Quit Your Office Job To Become A Homesteader
The job is reliable. You work in a clean office, and mostly you get paid to sit at a computer and type things. There are even a few nice benefits like accrued vacation and dental. You’re living the dream, right? Wrong. The signs are there, there’s no use denying them any more. Here are 22 signs…
A Look Inside My Fridge
I cleaned my fridge this weekend, stepped back to admire my domestic handiwork and realized I’d become a total Portlandia cliche. My fridge is half fermented vegetables and half backyard eggs. Every container is a mason jar. Oh, except for the basket. Right. There’s a twee basket in my fridge. You see where this urban homesteading thing…
The Bloody Valentine
Fifteen years ago, my now-husband and I went out for our first Valentine’s Day date. We went to a nearly-empty pub, sat down for a beer, and within 10 minutes some drunk guy we’d never met had twisted his barstool around started describing the sordid details of his ongoing, bitter divorce. We were young, and West-coast raised…