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urban homesteading in the pacific northwest

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Archives for October 2015

80October 19, 2015Productive Home by Erica

DIY Whipped Peppermint Foot Cream

At the risk of oversharing someone else’s podiatry problems, by husband has some janked up heels. They’re super dry and they get these deep cracks in them, especially in winter. (Sorry, sweetie.) This Whipped Peppermint Foot Cream was developed for super dry feet like my husband’s. The addition of peppermint essential oil gives the cream a…

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1October 16, 2015Recent Posts by Erica

5 Things Friday: 10/16/15

I’m going to try a new thing here – an end-of-the-week bullet point recap of all the things occupying my time and brain. Like every other blogger in the entire world, I’m calling this Five Things Friday. It’s where, once a week or as I remember, I just throw out things I love, things I…

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46October 12, 2015Cooking by Erica

When And How To Use Dried Herbs – Kitchen Tips Everyone Should Know

Look, I’m pro-fresh-herb. I love giant huge bunches of cilantro, I consider it a crime that parsley isn’t used as a vegetable, I’ll drink chimichurri sauce by the shot glass. Who has two thumbs and loves fresh herbs? This girl. And yet – there is a place for dried herbs. Usually, that place involves a big…

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25October 9, 2015Cooking by Erica

The Fig Old Fashioned

I have a fig tree, and this fig tree has my heart. What this fig tree does not have, unfortunately, is a reliable second crop of figs in our cool-summer climate. So, after the breba crop ripens, that’s usually it. This year, I dried all the breba figs I could, to try to extend our enjoyment…

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1October 8, 2015Productive Home by Nick

7 Questions Corporate America Has About Homesteading

So I have a bit of a reputation at the office. I’m the guy with the chickens. In fact, I run a whole informal and probably utterly HR-policy-violating side hustle of bringing some of our excess eggs into the office and selling them. Given that my manager and my manager’s manager are among my customers,…

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1October 6, 2015Cooking by Erica

Egg Rice: Good, Fast, Cheap Food

Last fall, while I was deep in the trenches of recipe testing for my book,  I found myself frequently confounded by dinner. Now you might think that, after 12 hours of recipe testing, dinner would be totally easy because I’d just serve the recipe tested food to my family, right? It rarely worked out so conveniently. Oh, sure,…

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165October 5, 2015Food Preservation by Erica

Help! Why Do My Canning Jars Keep Breaking? – Reader Question

It’s time for a reader question! Bay emailed to ask, “Help! My jars keep breaking when I put the wire basket in the boiling water. What am I doing wrong?” Thanks for the question, Bay. Let me guess – pickles? It’s almost always pickles. I’ve heard from several readers with this same jar breakage problem, and…

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27October 3, 2015Cooking by Erica

What Makes A Cocktail A Sour?

Many of the cocktails I share here are subtle variations on a theme. That theme has a name: The Sour. Ignore, for now, drinks with “sour” in the name like The Whiskey Sour or The Pisco Sour. While these drinks are in fact sours, not all sours announce themselves so obviously.

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Hi! I'm Erica, the founder of NWEdible and the author of The Hands-On Home. I garden, keep chickens and ducks, homeschool my two kids and generally run around making messes on my one-third of an acre in suburban Seattle. Thanks for reading!

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