Mostly Plants

Kombucha
The cranberry kombucha is all gone.  It was lovely, but it tasted so unlike tea that I tended to foget there was caffeine in it.  I think next time I will not use black tea for this.
Meanwhile, I have a new 3-quart batch of rose hips kombucha that’s looking close to ready!
Below the cut, Weinkraut [...]

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This is my own kitchen invention, inspired by something that an ex once dreamed up.
Time: one hour.  Servings: 4
Ingredients:
1 Winter Squash–butternut, acorn, or hubbard
1/2 cup brown rice
1/2 cup wild rice
16 oz corn kernels (canned, frozen, or fresh–your call)
16 oz roasted tomatoes
1 tbsp garam masala, or to taste
Garlic (in whatever form), to taste
OPTIONAL pinch cayenne pepper
Method:
Preheat [...]

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I just made an awesomely win-ful, eye-poppingly tart Cranberry Kombucha.  You should too.  This is how it goes:
Ingredients:
1 bottle store-bought Kombucha, any flavor (buy it at whole foods or your local health-food store).
1 cup sugar (cane, beet, corn, maple, whatever)
4 tea bags (your choice) or equivalent amount of loose tea
1 gallon-size crock pot (or scale [...]

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Tonight’s problem: Have bits in the kitchen; don’t want to cook anything complicated; don’t want to go to store.
Solution: Put bits on sandwich.  Details below, along with suggested substitutions.
Bits:
1 Uglyripe Tomato
1/2 White Onion
1 bucket mixed weird salad greens
1/2 tub baby bellas
1 link Tofurkey brand Italian Sausage substitute.  Consider any German, Italian, or Polish sausage (cooked), [...]

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Some of you, my dear readers, may have wondered what ever happened to my garden.  The short answer is I stopped paying it much attention after the first week of July, when I started caring about the bar.
I had assumed it was a total loss.  When I moved to Massachusetts I showed the plot to [...]

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Last night, with the aid of my friend Stephanie, I started a pumpkin ale. This entry is mostly for my reference, but published in hopes that somebody else may find it useful.
For a 5-gallon batch:
2 cans light Light Malt Extract
1/2 lb German Crystal dark malt
1/4 lb Chocolate Malt
1 lb flaked barley (looks like oatmeal)
1 [...]

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I do not claim that this recipe is “Indian” in any authentic sense.  It is tasty.  That is all I really care about.  That said, it is very tasty.
Ingredients:
That you can get anywhere:
2.5 c. Green lentils
1/2 large onion
3 cloves garlic
LOTS of ginger (I grated about a finger’s worth
McCormick Hot Madras Curry Powder, or your favorite [...]

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The garden is coming along quite nicely now.  I visited today, did some digging, and mulched around the brussels sprouts.  Three cubic feet of mulch didn’t go nearly as far as I thought they would, and I gestimate it would take about ten bags to mulch the whole garden.  Probably cheaper to plant chives, clover, [...]

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Yesterday I took possession of a Cornell garden plot out at Plantations, just south of the Dyce bee labs.  I got some Brussels Sprout seedlings from Home Depot and put them straight in the ground, and staked out my plot with dead limbs from the forest that other gardeners have used in the past (I [...]

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Michael Pollan has posted a letter to whole foods at his blog, responding to the whole foods CEO’s criticism of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’ll give you the punch line here, but you really ought to read the whole letter–explaining Pollan’s conclusion:
After spending time with you and reading your letter, I’ve wondered if perhaps I did, [...]

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