Soaking Rice for Improved Digestion and Nutrition
Part of my gut-care routine includes eating brown rice that I soak before cooking. Why Soak Rice? Like fermentation, soaking is a way to transform grains into a more nutritious…
Rosemary Cookies (Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free)
Botanically flavored cookies have been somewhat of an obsession of mine for many years – ever since I discovered an enchanting little baked goods shop in Paris, just down the…
Gluten Free Sourdough Dinner Rolls
Tasty dinner rolls have been one of the most hard to find gluten-free baked goods for me. One of the reasons I started experimenting with gluten free sourdough is that…
Celebrating a New Season: Autumn Rituals
As I sat outside this morning throwing the ball for Leo, I looked at the ground and noticed that the first leaves had begun to fall. The air was crisp,…
Gluten Free Sourdough Starter from Chick Pea Flour
After a few years of loyalty to my trusty brown rice sourdough starter, I tried experimenting with switching out the brown rice for chick pea flour earlier this year. To…
How to Be Less Reliant on Heating and AC
As I write this it is the middle of summer, and like many of the recent summers past we’ve experienced hotter than normal temperatures. And yet, in our household we…
North, South, East, or West: Determine Your Direction at Home
I did not grow up thinking about the cardinal directions. Although I was a Brownie (translation, “pre-Girl Scout”) for about one season as a child, all I remember from that…
How to Forage and Cook Lambsquarters
Do you grow spinach in your garden? If so, or even if you are just a spinach fan, you might want to consider branching out to this other, less well-known…
Alternate Ways to Use Sourdough Starter
Most people make sourdough starter with the intention of making bread. That was my intention as well, when I first started cultivating a starter. As it turns out, I use…
Edible Weeds: Blue Mustard, Arugula’s Wild Cousin
I have been craving sauteed greens lately – and as our stocks of frozen spinach have started to disappear, I’ve been thinking about what’s in the garden. Not the plants…
Edible Weeds: Dandelion
The first seeds in our spring garden are just barely starting to come up, and with less frequent access to the supermarket, I’ve been missing fresh greens. I was thrilled…
Garden News: Spring 2020
Howdy friends! It’s time to show off what Chad and I have been up to recently. It’s so nice to have energy to work on these projects instead of moping…
Prompts: Finding Perspective
Welcome back to your weekly lockdown prompt! If you didn’t see my answer to last week’s question, it’s right here. As previously mentioned, since many people are confined to their…
Gardening: How to Grow a Survival Garden for Beginners
Growing your own food must be sounding pretty good right about now, eh? And you’re not alone, based on the current run on seeds. The seed companies can’t keep up…
Prompts: Your Desert Island Foods
Being home with a somewhat limited food supply has me thinking about food a lot. I’m not exactly stuck on a desert island, yet, the situation makes me wonder what…
Prompts: Know Your Neighbors
Hi there! I hope everyone reading this is staying healthy, or recovering. I was sick for a month myself and am just regaining my normal rhythm, routine, and (mostly) energy.…
Garden News: Overwintered Carrots
This week, Chad and I received a gift from ourselves from the past – almost 20 lbs of carrots! We had a large carrot crop last summer and decided to…
Homekeeping: How to Get By Without Toilet Paper
I thought I would try to cover a few subjects of current interest to myself, and perhaps you, during this global health crisis we’re living through. Don’t moments like this…
Food Issues: No Clue about Paleo? Here’s the Answer.
Fellow food-intolerant friends, As mentioned here recently, I have spent some weeks (months?) of frustration on the food intolerance front, despite some fairly valiant efforts to avoid suspect items. During…
Homesteading: Creating and Keeping Routines
When we’re on the road, Chad and I like to listen to Great Courses CDs, and one of them we listened to recently was on decision making. Chad wasn’t excited…
Wildlife: Painted Lady Butterflies
Last summer we had some borage come up as volunteers in our garden. Did I say “some”? I meant thousands of plants. We didn’t have borage plants, we had borage…
Food Issues: A Quest for a Healthy Diet
I thought I had my healthy diet all figured out. Vegetarianism was my eating style of choice. For me, this choice lasted for twenty five years. After a long struggle…
Yoga: My Home Practice
I live in a very rural location with no access to regular yoga classes. But yoga is one of my great joys in life, so I’ve had to figure out…
On Aging and Growing Older
Over the past several years I have noticed something about growing older: I feel the same as I did when I was a little girl. I assume I am not…
Garden to Campsite
Last year we went on a short road trip to Montana. We made sure to take some of our garden produce with us to use as we stopped over at…
Garden News: Summer’s Harvests – 2019
Winter seems like a good time to look back at the past year’s summer bounty and see what did well for us out here in the high desert. Here are…
Climate: The High Desert
We live in the high desert in Northeast Utah, where the winters are long and cold and the summers are short and hot. It’s a continental climate. I first learned…
Garden News: Winter Seed Catalogs and Garden Planning
My spirits tend to get low during the winter – the post-holiday blues, gloomy weather, and reduced outdoors time always get to me. Winter here in NE Utah is long,…
Living With Less
Howdy friends, Lately I’ve been trying to recenter the framework for this blog. One of the things that keeps coming up is that life here on the homestead is so…
Homekeeping: How to Buy Organic Gluten Free in Bulk
If like me, you’re trying to make a simple living by being largely self-sufficient, finances are probably one of your constant concerns. But along with pinching pennies, I also have…
Recipe: Gluten-Free Sourdough Pancakes
Life-Changing Two-Ingredient Pancakes How many times have you wanted pancakes but didn’t have a mix on hand? This recipe will show you that you’ll never need to buy a pancake…
Garden News: The Apricopocalypse
My Two Weeks (Or So) Of Non-Stop Apricots One of the nice things about living on an old homestead is that usually some person, decades ago, was smart enough to…
Food Issues: Vegetarian – To Be Or Not To Be?
Why I Embraced Vegetarianism… And Why I Gave It Up One evening as a young teen I was babysitting for some family friends. The baby was safe and sound in…
Garden News: First Bean Harvest of Summer – 2019
Growing heirloom snap beans This spring as I planned our garden, I wanted to make sure we planned heavy on produce that would get us through the winter – including…
Garden News: Harvesting Apricots – 2019
Harvesting Apricots in July in Utah We have one mature apricot tree on our property. Mostly every year it blooms a bit early, then a frost comes along and kills…
Recipes: How to Make Fermented Sauerkraut
Make Your Own Homemade Sauerkraut Making homemade fermented sauerkraut used to scare me. Along with the fear of botulism, I was also confused and unsure how to proceed. I really…
Native Plants: Elkweed
On a recent hike I was excited to discover a plant I was unfamiliar with. For those of you who grew up in the Western US, you probably are familiar…
Food: Cauliflower and Mushroom Sauté
Last night as dinner time approached, I looked in the fridge. Nothing to eat, or so it seemed. I looked in the cupboard. I considered cooking a box of (gluten…
Tips: How to Keep Track of Your Plantings in a Permaculture Garden
Keeping Track Of What You Plant In Your Garden A few years ago I excitedly planted several varieties of snap beans and dry beans in the same section of the…
Recipe: Winter Squash Potage
“Potage” is a French word used to describe a soup. While living in France I learned that the term “potage” referred to the type of pureed soup that I’m cooking…
A Natural Resolution
In her book the Nature Fix, author Florence Williams says that the Finnish recommend being in nature for 5 hours a month to reap health benefits. That seems like a…
Gluten Free and Organic Bread Options
We, the gluten intolerant and celiac-afflicted really miss the taste and texture of wheat bread. Yes, there are substitutes, but once you make your way around the gluten-free bread…
Recipe: Gluten Free Sourdough Starter
Most of us have probably heard that fermented foods are healthy for us, increasing the biodiversity in our microbiomes. Fermentation is also an exciting way to see nature at work…
Nature: Love is a Two Way Street
Author, Professor, Botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer asked her students this question one day: You love nature but do you think that nature loves…
Foraging: Why Eat Wild Food?
Getting to Know Plants My first gardening experience came when I was a teenager. Back then “gardening” for me was an after school job at a small, family-owned garden center,…
Garden News: Polyculture Garden in Late Summer
On this last day of August the days are still hot and I find myself longing for fall. The garden is producing beautifully, and everything seems as if it will…
Foraging and Cooking Wild Asparagus
Asparagus grows wild and abundant around here in the springtime, but we only have a few small patches growing near our driveway. We harvested a few stalks one morning for…
Gardening: Composting in the Desert
Anyone who gardens or simply cooks a lot of vegetables quickly finds out – you must have a compost pile! Vegetable waste translates into useful fertilizer and soil very quickly…
Homesteading: Sheepy Poos
When my husband introduced me to his two icelandic sheep, I asked what their names were. He looked slightly embarrassed and told me he hadn’t named them. Strangely, two names instantly came…
Gardening: Desert Garden Design
Over the past ten years or so my husband has been planting a fairly traditional garden. Each year he tills the ground with a tractor then digs out rows to plant…
Gardening: Gardening in the Desert
Contrary to what you might think, people can and do garden in the desert. However there are certain obstacles to overcome that those of you in more clement areas won’t…
Native Plants: Milkweed
Milkweed is one of the loved, cherished weeds we have growing on our property. The plant is very important for monarch butterflies and may be edible (this subject gives rise to much…
Garden News: Cold Frame Conundrum
I have four cold frames that I made using plastic storage bins and two more that use glass with the thermal mass of bricks and stone. These are experimental and so…
Garden News: New Life in Macro – Spring 2017
If you’re a gardener but have never planted from seed before, you really must try it. Every year when I plant seeds there’s always some doubt: they might not come up.…
Garden News: New Cold Frame
Me and my sweetie went a little crazy ordering seeds a couple of weeks ago. When we combined households last year our seed collections expanded dramatically! I added a lot of…
Starting Seeds
Over the past week or so I’ve been starting seeds in some DIY cold frames which consist of plastic storage bins with a few holes drilled into the bottom. I…
A Climate Change
But not the kind you might be thinking of. Last year I moved away from the Southeast where the summers are hot and humid and the winters are mild. It…
Native Plants: Curly-Cup Gumweed
This summer, anytime we walked up to the end of our lane, Chad would point out a plant with bright yellow flowers growing along side it and tell me he…
Fermentation and Your Fantastic Gut: Why Fermented Foods Help
If you haven’t heard about the importance of gut bacteria to your health, well, where have you been? It’s been everywhere! Research on gut bacteria and health has taken a…
Wildlife: How to Attract Birds to Your Backyard
Last weekend I took a class on birds. It was a great crash course in ornithology and I was delighted to learn all sorts of interesting things about our feathery friends. The…