Over the past year I’ve tried three different diets to help with my gastrointestinal issues and inflammation: the Low FODMAP diet, the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet, and the Low Histamine…
Need some last minute ideas for your stay at home Halloween? I’ve got a couple for you. A couple of weeks ago we attended a virtual ghost tour of Edith…
What do you call a big veggie with attitude? Sassquash. Now that I’ve gotten that terrible joke out of my system, it’s time to share some gardening news. As a…
Sometimes in the middle of summer when it seems like all our spare time goes to the garden, both Chad and I can start to question our commitment to gardening.…
I’m going to give you a primer on the first steps you can take at home to reduce your exposure to EMFs – no meter required! First, though, I thought…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…