Chickens are not what you expect. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my hens. I love their enthusiastic productivity, their damn near egg-a-day fecundity. I love their retirement plan (soup) almost as much. But there are a lot of myths about chickens floating around out there, and they deserved to be debunked. Myth One:…
Recent Posts
The Beauty of The Survivor
Part One My mom will say, if you live long enough, it’ll happen to you or to someone you know. It really doesn’t matter what “it” is – disease, divorce, death, loss of a child, suicide, job loss, tragedy. Live long enough and eventually these things will touch your world. I know friends, mentors, parents of…
Getting Out Of The Foodie Bubble
Every girl should have a friend who’s witty, opinionated, drives really fast motorcycles and is equally comfortable cooking French food with hand-foraged mushrooms or drinking wine out of a half-pint canning jar. For me, that friend is chef and author Lisa Simpson. Lisa was kind enough to contribute her thoughts here on the perils of…
That Awkward Moment When The Room Goes Quiet And You're Still Talking
Have you noticed that some of the Big Boys are pretty quiet right now? Have you wondered why? Well, let’s just say that if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the US Congress is one heckova brick-maker. This quick video explains the likely legislative consequences of the Stop On-Line Piracy Act (SOPA)…
How To Plan Your Harvest Based On What You Eat (Plus The Winner of The Urban Farm Handbook!)
One you you awesome readers has won The Urban Farm Handbook. But before you shoot right to the bottom of this post to find out if it’s you, read on to discover a great way to plan your harvest from the plate backwards. This is a technique straight out of The Urban Farm Handbook, so…
The Sky Cloche, Or Why Snow Probably Shouldn't Scare You
In Seattle there is less than an inch of snow on the ground. At my house, further North, we got a dusting. Local media outlets call events like this “BLIZZARD WATCH 2012” and “SNOWMAGEDDON.” People who went to college in Minnesota or grew up in Maine get their chance to drone on and on about how…
Should You DIY or Hire A Pro?
Sometimes we face the question of whether to Do It Ourselves or cough up some cash and let a professional handle the particulars. Let’s say there’s a spectrum: make jam would be an easy DIY call. Perform brain surgery on your child would be an easy Hire The Pros call. In between, things are less obvious….
Ack! My Sauerkraut Has Mold On It!
So you picked up a copy of Wild Fermentation and became a lacto-fermentation groupie, huh? It happens, I get it, it happened to me. And why wouldn’t you want to ferment everything in sight? The result is tasty, nutritious, rooted in the oldest traditions of food preservation and kinda badass in a “I dance with the…
Build A Lower Waste Lunch
A friend asked for some tips on packing lower-plastic and lower-waste lunches for her school-age son. This rather surprised me, since this particular friend is genuine cloth-diapering, Keystone XL Pipeline-protesting, etsy-craft-selling kind of girl. And in fact, when further questioned, it turned out my friend was already packing a pretty green lunch, but was looking…
Photo Tour Of The Winter Garden
This has been such a mild winter. My chard and lettuces are still going strong, along with some herbs I never would have thought to be harvestable in January, like cilantro and lemon verbena. It’s such a treat to be able to harvest this kind of food rainbow in the dead of winter. Scenes…
Your Chance to Win 'The Urban Farm Handbook'
What better way to celebrate the new look and feel of NW Edible than with a chance to win the best new urban homesteading book on the market? When Annette Cottrell, co-author with Joshua McNichols of The Urban Farm Handbook and author of the site Sustainable Eats, asked me if I’d like to host a giveaway…
Big Upcoming Changes On NW Edible
Well, the times they are a changin’….Or at least, this blog it is a changing. Tomorrow, and through the weekend, I will be implementing some pretty big changes to the look and structure of this blog. What this will mean for you, the reader: It will be easier to find the posts with recipes, the…