You know what’s blacker than Black Friday? Beautiful, glistening, well seasoned cast iron cookware. Oh, yeah, baby. Screw waiting in line for some discount plastic crap or overpumped electronica that’ll be in a landfill in 6 months anyway. If you must shop, shop for something hewn from the living, molten rock of Earth. Something hefty…
Archives for November 2013
Easy Skillet Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Oh, poor maligned Mr. Brussels Sprout. Seems like he gets pulled out every year as a Thanksgiving side and then is forgotten the rest of the year. Can’t you just imagine him in a group therapy session for one-day-only vegetables? Brussels would take the floor: “Hey guys. Yeah, well, it’s gotten a little bit better…
Drunken Pie Crust: The Secret To Great Pie
Other dishes are quintessential on the Thanksgiving table, sure: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes. I consider Brussels sprouts essential, and some kind of cranberry preserve that has never seen a can must grace the table, too. But pie – oh boy, that’s where the buck stops, isn’t it? Pumpkin pie is a classic, but apple and…
{Giveaway} Backyard Roots: Lessons on Living Simply From 35 Urban Farmers
A few years ago I met photographer and author Lori Eanes when she came to take pictures of my garden for a book she was doing. The book is called Backyard Roots: Lessons on Living Simply From 35 Urban Farmers, and it’s a highly visual exploration of urban farms up and down the west coast…
Get A Shovel. This is Urban Homesteading.
Today I put about thirty pounds of pork belly into cure for bacon and pancetta, made a loaf of bread, mixed a bottle of homemade citrus cleaner, and buried one dead chicken. Get a shovel. This is urban homesteading. If you keep chickens, dead chickens are part of the deal. You get what you get…
Romaine Salad with Sweet Potatoes and Tangy Blue Cheese Dressing
This salad came about, as so many things in my kitchen do, because I was looking to use up some leftovers. For dinner a night or two before I made this salad I had roasted several sweet potatoes in their skins and served them simple and plain, with butter and salt passed at the table….
Build vs. Buy – A Garden Soil Dilemma
We’ve all been there, out of room and eager to expand the garden. That sod starts to look like the enemy and eventually the only question is, do you smother the grass with whatever you can find, or do you buy ready-to-go soil and get your seedlings in the ground asap? Build vs. Buy, a…
Digging For God
Let’s take a second and address that last giant venting post about douche-waffles before getting back to our regularly scheduled programming, shall we? First, thank you. I know I said I wasn’t looking for atta-boys, and I wasn’t. But when you shish kabob your heart onto a stick and hoist it up into the ugly…
Thoughts On Douche-Waffles Who Poop In Your Pool
When the USS Enterprise is in a big ol’ space battle, there comes a point where Captain Kirk, or Captain Picard or whoever is sitting in the big chair, has to “direct all power to the shields.” Everything else gets sent into reserve-power-mode: lights dim, warp speed is out of the question and the photon…
Beyond PB&J: Easy Sauces To Use Your Preserves
Pantry full of jam? Yeah…me too. And while I like a good jam thumbprint shortbread cookie as much as the next person, there’s only so much sweet I can take, you know? (Okay, that’s is a lie, but at least 19 times out of 20 I do not actually scoop homemade jam into my mouth…
How to Get The Seeds Out of A Pomegranate Without Going Crazy
Pomegranate: possibly the most delicious fruit ever. Surely the most tedious fruit ever. Separating all those seeds from the extensive, bitter membranes that intersperse the delicious seeds of the pom is a herculean task. I have developed a pretty decent hold-sections-of-pom-over-the-sink-and-scrape-the-seeds-off-with-my-teeth technique, and even manage to eat this seasonal winter fruit without getting horror-movie-esque levels…