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Four Ways to Preserve Prickly Pear Pads (Nopales)
For my final project in the Los Angeles Master Food Preserver Program I attempted to see how many ways I could preserve the abundant pads of the prickly pear cactus that grows in our front yard. Of...
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How to Make a Native Bee Nesting Box
Back in the spring I made a native bee nesting box by drilling a bunch of holes in the long end of a 4 by 6 inch piece of scrap wood. I cut one end of the 4 x 6 at an angle so that I could nail on a...
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How To Dry Food With the Sun
Drying Apricots in Southern California–early 20th century style. Dehydration is one of my favorite food preservation techniques. Drying food concentrates flavor and is a traditional technique in our...
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How To Ice Glaze Fish
Photo by Portable Soul Ice glazing is a process of creating a thin layer of ice to help preserve foods, usually chicken or fish. Ice glazing prevents freezer burn and helps preserve texture and...
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Learn How To Can For Free
Want to learn how to can? The National Center For Home Food Preservation has a free online course. Offered by the University of Georgia, the course covers canning of both high and low acid foods along...
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How to Juice Prickly Pear Fruit
Joseph working the thrift-store mill I always know it’s prickly pear fruit season when questions start coming in on a recipe I did for a prickly pear fruit jelly. Unfortunately, the mucilaginous and...
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How To Make Hoshigaki (Dried Persimmons)
Hoshigaki image from Wikipedia Hoshigaki are a Japanese delicacy made by, believe it or not, gently massaging persimmons while they air dry. I took a workshop this weekend taught by Laurence Hauben on...
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How to Bake a Traditional German Rye Bread
UPDATE: I have completely revised this recipe–thanks to Dana Morgan for testing and input! In the interest of health, I’ve focused my bread baking obsession of late on 100% or near 100% whole rye...
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How To Roast Coffee in a Hot Air Popcorn Popper
UPDATE 12/17/2012: My hot air popper died on me. See my new blog post on coffee roasting. Roasting my own coffee has been one of the most satisfying and easy homesteading projects I’ve ever taken on....
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How to Cycle Safely
No I’m not making this up. Thank you Bikesnobnyc for finding a “bicycle accident fun set.” To follow up on yesterday’s post Is Cycling Too Dangerous? I thought I’d post some tips and resources I’ve...
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Hoshigaki Success!
I’d estimate that one out of ten new homesteading projects succeeds. Which is why I’m especially happy that the long process of drying persimmons the Japanese way (hoshigaki) has been a big success....
View ArticleHow To Make a Cotton Ball Fire Starter
In this video you’ll learn how to make a cotton ball fire starter. It’s easy: Rub some petroleum jelly in a couple of cotton balls and store them in a pill bottle. That’s it. We got five and half...
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Freezing Meat With Freezer Paper
A good question came in on Friday’s post about freezing fruits and vegetables about how to freeze meat products without using plastic bags. I don’t know of a way to avoid plastic with meat products,...
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How to Freeze Food in Canning Jars
Canning jars are the best way I know to avoid using plastic when freezing foods. You’ll want to use wide mouthed canning jars like the one above, that come in pint and half pint sizes. Don’t use jars...
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How To Fix a Broken Spring on an O’Keefe and Merritt Stove
You hear a pop and suddenly the stove door on your O’Keefe and Merritt flops down. Thankfully, with an O’Keefe and Merritt, you’ve got a stove that’s easy to fix. All you need to do is access the...
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How To Manage a Compost Pile Using Temperature
I’ve always been confused about when to turn a compost pile. Some people suggest lots of turning while others don’t turn at all. I built a pile in December using a technique I learned from Will Bakx,...
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One Secret for Delicious Soup–A Parmesan Cheese Rind
Our cats seem to sneak into every food related photo session. This is simple, but it works so very well. If you use real Parmesan cheese, like Parmigiano-Reggiano, save those rock-hard rinds. They are...
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Beans 101 (Return of Bean Friday!)
Simple is good. As a follow up to the “Dollar Supper” post, this post is about is the simple act of making a pot of beans. I make beans about once a week, the goal being to always have beans in the...
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Arduino Homesteading Projects
An Arduino-based chicken coop controller on Instructables. At the risk of putting high tech in our low tech, I just took an introductory Arduino class at Crash Space along with the folks at Zapf...
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Citified Parched Corn
Dried corn on the left, parched corn with peas and blueberries on right I was thinking about trail food, and wishing for a portable snack which was not based on nuts and chocolate chips (though there’s...
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How to make your soup wonderful: Wild food soup stock
We’ve mentioned urban foragers and foodie extraordinaires Pascal Baudard and Mia Wasilevic before. They not only forage food, but go on to make really good stuff with it. One of their websites is...
View ArticleThe Upside Down Fire
This is how I make a campfire fire now. I used to use the teepee method, or some half-assed rendition of the teepee method, and I often had trouble with such fires. They required babying, rebuilding,...
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Roasted Asparagus
This, believe it or not, is a cake! I found it at Sweetapolita, where she’ll tell you how to make it. Erik’s aunt just called to ask me how I cook my asparagus, because she wants to make it for company...
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How do you care for cast iron?
They really knew how to rock cast iron in those days. A couple of months ago I found an 8″ cast iron skillet on the sidewalk. It was a newer model pan, already seasoned, hardly used. One of my...
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Why are the pockets on women’s clothing so lame?
Trout likes himself a sewing project. Especially one he can lay on. Or gnaw on. What is with women’s clothing? Why are all of the pockets sized somewhere between tiny and non-existent? There seems to...
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Recycled Dish Scrubby
My dish washing accoutrements consist of cotton dish cloths–which steadily devolve lower and lower down the Rag Hierarchy as they age–and homemade scrubbies. I make my scrubbies out of net produce...
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Watering 101
This is watering 101. Those of you who have been gardening for a while have probably learned this the hard way. Those of you just starting out may find it helpful. Soil lies. It looks wet, but it’s...
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How to save tomato seed
Seeds fermenting in water. Not pretty, but pretty important! The jar got shaken up while walking it outside for its photo op., so it looks a little cloudy and messy. In your jar, you should see a layer...
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Gourmet Foraging and Advanced Acorn Processing
It’s acorn season in Southern California. I’ve long been interested in acorns, knowing that they were the staple food of the native people who lived here, and I’ve gathered and processed them before....
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Primitive Grain Storage Technique
When thinking about technology, I like to play with the idea of what is the absolute minimum you need to get the job done. This may be because I’m not very handy at building things, but yet have...
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New Project: Making Bitters
Our friend Emily Ho over at The Kitchn recently posted a good set of instructions on how to make homemade bitters. Bitters are made up of various aromatic substances tinctured in alcohol. These...
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Stern Sprouted Wheat Vegan Cookie or Health Bar Type Things
The holidays are over. Repentance begins. I’m going to share with you a recipe for some ridiculously healthy cookie-type things. Despite their minimalist, uber-healthy ingredients, they’re pretty...
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Bread Ovens of Quebec Free e-book
North American has two regions famous for oven building: New Mexico and Quebec. The design of the ovens of Quebec have their origin in much older French ovens. The Canadian Museum of History has...
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How To Force Carbonate at Home
There are as many ways to force carbonate as there are paths up the holy mountain. I wanted to avoid both the SodaStream’s loss-leader economic model (expensive refills) as well as hacked systems that...
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Quick Relief for Poison Oak
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons I went camping in Poison Oak Central last week, and though I tried to be careful, I got a kiss on the back of the hand from our rakish woodland friend, Toxicodendron...
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How to Deal with Extremely Root Bound Plants
First off, don’t buy root bound plants. It’s just a bad business, trouble and tears. In general, you should always try to buy the youngest plants you can find. They are healthier than plants which...
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How to Make Stock
The Old Kitchen by Hendrik Valkenburg, 1872 (image courtesy of Wikimedia) By reader request, we’re going to cover the basics of making soup stock today: how to make it and how to use it. Let’s start...
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Toilet paper in the woods: a rant and some advice
What’s wrong with this picture? Ladies. Sisters. I have a rant for you. It’s an appeal to women, because this is pretty much a woman-centered problem. It’s about leaving toilet paper behind after...
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Quick Tip: DIY Decaf Tea
EDITED 8/6/2014 It appears we have been taken in by a popular Internet myth. A reader comment (Thanks, Laura!) brought alerted me to an excellent post on tea myths and includes findings from...
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Shoemaking workshop in Los Angeles, Oct. 16-19
The kid’s shoe is made of salmon skin. If you’re a loon like I am, and want to make your own shoes, I have great news for you. This October, my friend Randy Fritz is coming down from Santa Barbara to...
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DIY Sage Deodorant
I like Weleda because they are one of the few cosmetic companies that makes products simple enough for my tastes. Their website is also well done in that they break down and explain every component in...
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How to add sparkle to your natural decorations: sugaring
In my last post, about our mostly all-natural Christmas tree, I mentioned that some of the ornaments are sugared leaves and berries. Sugaring is a really easy, simple way to bring a little bling to...
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Project Update: The Carbonator
A year ago on Valentine’s Day, Erik gave me a homebrew carbonator so that we could sparkle our own water at home. It’s a wonderfully industrial looking item, and sturdy as all heck. I’m pleased to say...
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How to polish your silver effortlessly–with Science!
Tarnished flatware waiting for a bath Here at Root Simple, we live high on the hog. We eat off of silver spoons every day. It’s true. I inherited a set of silver flatwear and utensils from my mom’s...
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How to Make Your Own DIY Instant Oatmeal
Long time readers will remember my trauma when I accidentally bought a box of “low-sugar” i.e. artificially sweetened instant oatmeal. I took it on a camping trip unawares, and ended up trapped in the...
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Waxed Cloth Food Wrap (Made in a solar oven for bonus self-righteousness points)
Reuseable food wrap made with wax infused cloth is a thing. DIY instructions for it are all over the web. It sort of had its moment in the sustainable limelight a few years ago, so I know this post is...
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Salted Spruce Tips and Pine Infused Garlic Salt
I’ve been really enjoying homemade seasoned salt lately, especially herb and conifer salts, but also just plain old garlic salt. For me, garlic salt sort of snuck under my DIY radar. If a recipe calls...
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Toggler Snaptoggle® Heavy-Duty Toggle Bolts
How did I get through 50 years in this veil of tears without knowledge of the Toggler Snaptoggle® Heavy-Duty 3/16″ Toggle Bolt? In those years of suffering, how many times have I punched a series of...
View ArticleCuring Boredom with Solenoids
Sixteen year old Brandon Switzer came up with a way of dealing with boredom: build a player piano. The project uses a humble Arduino and a whole lot of solenoids. It took six months to finish. I’ve...
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BrickTube
We had this crow statue sitting around for years with no place to go and a big pile of unused bricks, the remains of a failed parkway path project. Last week I finally got around to putting the two...
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