life on garden time
Homebrew Husband and I are dancing around the idea of maybe, someday, possibly keeping honeybees. We are being very sensible about this. We are not rushing in. We are getting a bee education before we plunge into apiarying. I’m currently taking a fantastic Apprentice Beekeeping class through the local branch of Washington State University’s Extension program, and when I’m done, he’ll take [Continue Reading...]
My dad, a capable man by any measure, a highly skilled Marine in his youth, a brilliant car mechanic and automotive diagnostician as an adult, and a generally handy-about-the-house guy, has long confessed that he does not know how to boil water. If a man of his skill and diverse competencies cannot boil water then [Continue Reading...]
Thanksgiving is my favorite of the celebratory checkpoints in the Fall-to-Winter Holiday Season. Putting aside the historical – ahem – issues regarding the origin story of Thanksgiving, I can really get behind a good celebration of the harvest and a day dedicated to gluttony and loosening one’s pants. This year’s Thanksgiving was a bit different because we [Continue Reading...]
Happy Thanksgiving, all. I’m off to go prep for dinner. Have a warm and wonderful holiday, completely free of fried-onions-in-a-can. See you next week, if I’m not sucked permanently into The Turkey Vortex. What are your plans for the mass of leftovers the Grand National Gluttony Festival will inevitably leave you with?
A fellow personal chef friend of mine who is married to a Finnish man gave me this…uh…suggestive kitchen tool a few years back. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t entirely certain what it was (Scandinavian modern sculpture? World’s biggest muddler? Minimalist bishop from an oversize chess set?) or what to do with it, though several inappropriate [Continue Reading...]
If you like mussels, you love them. If you don’t…well, just come back tomorrow when I’ll be talking about something different. No hard feelings, really. There now, all the mussel-haters have gone and left just us, right? Great, more bivalves for us! This recipe a great way to steam clams or mussels that has a bit more [Continue Reading...]
There are some techniques that, when you have been doing them for awhile, seem so natural and automatic it comes as something of a shock to learn some people don’t know about them. For me, this is one such technique: How To Dice An Onion It will almost certainly take you longer to scroll through [Continue Reading...]
And I quote: “Kohlrabi (German turnip) is a low, stout cultivar of the cabbage that will grow almost anywhere.” Now that’s my kind of vegetable. You can keep your hothouse flowering melons and peppers – “will grow almost anywhere” is exactly what I’m looking for in a vegetable, especially if that tenacity is combined with [Continue Reading...]
This is my apple peeler gadget: I don’t know if this thing has a proper name. It seems like something you’d find in the back of a barn somewhere to crank start machinery that no one uses anymore. And in truth it probably was invented 160 years ago and hasn’t changed since. But don’t let the [Continue Reading...]
Here’s the concept: pasta + greens + very light cream sause = deceptively elegant, super easy dinner in a hurry with stuff you have lying around. The exact pasta, greens and cheese can be mixed to suit whatever you have on hand. This version is Orecchiette with Rainbow Chard, Tomatoes and Stilton. Chard (like its [Continue Reading...]
A while back I realized that the cheap scrubbing-mitts I kept in the shower might do for root veggies what they do for my post-garden-work-Hobbit feet: get the dirt off. I bought a pair for kitchen use and put them to work. Here’s how they fared against purple potatoes and sunchokes fresh out of the [Continue Reading...]
Don't need a Garden Planner & Journal? Tips are gratefully appreciated and help pay for blog hosting services, seeds and extra compost to keep the garden and the writing going.
What's this Tip Jar thing all about, anyway?
Latest Comments