Click here to go straight to the recipe Updated 04/19/20 A year ago I wondered if Eleanor would make it to this day. I had baked with a couple of other sourdough starters before Eleanor came along, and I thought they exhibited fundamental flaws—they lacked vigor, they smelled too acidic, they produced lackluster loaves. As I’ve come […]
All Recipes
Looseleaf Chai
Click here to go straight to the recipe I drink vats of tea. I buy looseleaf tea in a glass jar I take to the store and once home, brew the tea in either my small pot with a built-in strainer or in my daughter’s TARDIS infuser. I toss the spent leaves into my compost bucket […]
How to Make Candied Citrus Peels
Click here to go straight to the recipe My younger daughter Charlotte loves mandarin oranges. While the peel to fruit ratio of these small, juicy, sweet oranges doesn’t quite hit 1:1, at three dollars a pound, I do pay quite a lot for peels. And although compost can save the world, I would like to […]
The Mother of All Ferments: Kombucha
Click here to go straight to the recipe If you can brew a pot of tea, you can brew kombucha. The only trick to making kombucha is obtaining a mother to get started. A generous Twitter friend sent me part of hers and my mother (I named her Etheldreda) has been reproducing like mad. Otherwise […]
How to Make 5 Dairy Staples Each with 2 Ingredients
I like to keep my grocery shopping simple and buy as few items as possible. And because I don’t buy food packaged in plastic, I can’t buy many items. (Today’s news on the health risks of plastic food packaging comes to you from the New York Times…) However, where I live, I can buy organic, pastured […]
Flourless Chocolate Coconut Cake
Click here to go straight to the recipe This Saturday, I will provide tea and treats at my friend Todd’s piano recital during a short intermission between classical and jazz sets. Because I want to make this a zero-waste event, I’ll hand out each goodie on a homemade reusable napkin. That means everything I bake […]
How to Make Free Apple Scrap Vinegar
Updated 09/24/22 In my home, homemade vinegar has been the Holy Grail of scratch cooking. My daughter MK tried a few years ago and came very close, but flies invaded her apple scraps and ruined it. It sure smelled great though as I tossed it onto the compost. I have tried making vinegar a couple of […]
How to Remove Pomegranate Seeds
Did you know that in the story of the Garden of Eden, Eve would likely have tempted Adam with a pomegranate and not an apple?* I may be projecting my own pomegranate issues here, but I imagine that today’s shoppers, lured by the pomegranate’s alluring pink–red shade, plump pregnant shape and promise of juicy sweet seeds, experience that […]
DIY Lard
If this was truly DIY, I would also raise the pigs… This may sound like a contradiction, or merely a justification from a woman who really likes to eat lard, but I don’t actually eat much meat and I rarely eat pork.