The stars aligned yesterday. Everyone was up and dressed early, it was a beautiful sunny morning, breakfast and a packed school lunch came together without a fuss. My daughter was done eating her breakfast and we had an easy half-hour until we had to be at the bus stop, so we walked. It’s a long half-mile to…
Archives for 2011
The Addictive Power Of Pork Fat
Well, I don’t usually echo Emeril Lagasse, but pork fat really does rule. I’ve known vegetarians who hot-rodded their Boca patty with bacon when they thought people weren’t looking, and any meat product that can find its way into desserts is a force to be reckoned with. But pork fat isn’t just bacon. For as long as…
Can You Get Arrested if You Kill-A-Watt?
My local library system has partnered with my local power company to make Kill-A-Watt energy meters available for check-out, just like a book or video. A few weeks ago, I checked out a Kill-A-Watt. These things look like a remote control and a power strip had a baby. You plug your appliance into the Kill-A-Watt,…
The Simplest Salad In The World
Salad days are here. My lettuce is responding to our cool drizzly weather by growing big and verdant and tender. Say what you will about a crappy, sunless spring; the lettuce loves it. Thanks to an over-eager over-seeding of lettuce back in February, I have a bed of lettuce to eat, and it all looks like this:…
Sowing Peas in Guttering: Wherein I Grudgingly Admit This Technique Rocks
Every American gardening book I own says you absolutely must direct sow peas because they loathe root disturbance. Every British gardening book I own advocates sowing peas early in the season in a length of guttering. They always use this exact phrase – length of guttering – and whenever I read it, my internal dialog…
Urban Homesteading for Corporate Tools
For those of you transitioning from the corporate world to the homestead, I have prepared this helpful guide, dual homed with one foot in a Muck Boot and the other in a Wingtip Oxford. Though they may seem divergent, the core competencies of gardening and cubicle wrangling are not so different after all. The language…
How To Turn A Pack-and-Play Into A Chicken Brooder
I am learning what every first-time chicken keeper knows: chickens grow fast. At three weeks old, our 6 birds had outgrown their rubbermaid brooder. They were getting a bit too excited about their flight feathers and were constantly crashing into things, like the mesh ceiling of their brooder. They clearly needed more free ranger space. Thankfully,…
What Moms Want, What They Really, Really Want
Chances are good that if you are reading this you are a mother (much of my readership being female and of a certain domestic bent). Chances are excellent that even if you are not personally a mom, there is a mother in your life: perhaps your spouse or the woman who brought you into this…
Japanese Style Leek And Beef Skewers
When we pulled the last of the season’s leeks from one of our beds, we ended up with quite a few leeks. Several people asked me what what in the world I was going to do with all those leeks. Well, the first thing I want to clarify if that, as a family, we eat…
Even Urban Homesteaders Get The Blues
My little boy had surgery last Wednesday. He’s fine, it was an expected and “routine” procedure. I put routine in quotes, because turning my not-yet-eight month old over to surgeons is, blessedly, pretty out-of-the-ordinary for me. Because he was going under general anesthesia at 7:30 am, he could not eat or drink, including nursing, after…
My, How You've Grown!
The chicks are two weeks old now. They are changing day by day. I’m a bit shocked by how fast they are growing. Relatedly, I am a bit shocked by how much they eat. Yesterday morning my daughter called out, “Mom! Come here!” in that voice that means something is really, actually wrong. One of…
There's Not Going To Be An Earthquake. But If There Is…
“There’s not going to be an earthquake. It’s not going to happen. But if there is an earthquake, we have to be prepared.” So began the neighborhood meeting on emergency preparedness. Six of us gathered, representing about half the homes on the block. We wanted to talk about disaster readiness from a local community perspective. We talked…