Do you love your hot water bottle as much as I love mine? I fill it with almost boiling water and slide it between the sheets on cold winter nights and then my bed is toasty when I climb in. All night, I keep the water bottle near my feet so that they stay so […]
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10 Sauces for Rice & Bean Bowls
Many budget-conscious people depend on rice and bean or other grain bowls for meals every week. In our family, we have a bowl meal at least once a week (and often twice!) because they are easy, filling, and inexpensive. Rice cooks effortlessly in the rice cooker, and beans can come from a can or be […]
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20+ Recipes Using Ingredients from Food Banks & Food Pantries
The government shut down seems to show no sign of letting up, and it’s going to affect millions of people who rely on SNAP dollars to buy meals. Once the funds they have are all gone, many people will have to rely on food pantries throughout the United States. Food pantries can give out a […]
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How to be a homesteader when you don’t have any land
So you have been learning about homesteading – either urban or in the country – and you’re excited. You’re ready. You are just itching to get started, but wait. You live in an apartment and don’t have access to ground for growing. Or you live in a rental house and don’t want to (or can’t!) […]
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My Real-Life Preserving List: What I Can, What I Freeze, and What I Pass On
As we are about to get cooking for this year’s canning season pretty soon, I thought I’d talk about what I do and don’t preserve. As I get more and more into eating seasonally and as I get older, I find myself taking a really pragmatic view of canning season: I want to focus on […]
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5 Powerhouse Herbs that Might Be Growing as Weeds in Your Yard
Last year, I had a bunch of wasp’s nests in my yard. I kept getting bitten and stung. One time, I got stung in my eyebrow. The toxins almost immediately started flowing down into my eye, and it became completely swollen. It was incredibly painful. Everytime I got stung, I immediately ran to my garden […]
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How to Build and Fill Free or Super Cheap Raised Beds
I have tried all the different types of growing. In the ground, hugelkultur, raised beds – as long as it’s free or super cheap, I’ve tried it all. And I’ve found that different types of beds are better for different types of growing. For me, it makes sense to put annuals in a raised bed […]
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Book Review: Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver et al.
(This was originally an essay that I wrote for my Urban Farming class in Undergrad in Fall 2024. It’s been updated to make it relevant here! P.S. I got an A!) Sprinkled with essays, recipes, and short stories, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the true story of a family who vowed to eat and live off […]
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Food Words Matter: Understanding the Language of Health, Justice, and Home Cooking
There are some pretty severe limitations with using any one word to define your eating style. From leaving out whole categories of nutritious foods, to judging others for their food choices, the definitions of food terms can be very harmful or just reductive. However, it’s also important to have a basic understanding of terms when […]
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Kale Yeah! Easy Ways to Eat More Greens (Without Hating It)
Okay, let’s be real here. Eating more greens isn’t exactly an exciting idea for most people. Greens are the side dish we skip the sad pile on our plate, or something that we only reach for when we’re trying to “be good.” But greens deserve better treatment than that. These amazing leafy powerhouses are packed […]
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