The Food Co-op
You probably already know that I am a total fan girl of what Amber Sallisbury and her team at the Great Basin Community Food Co-op have accomplished in the last 3 years. They have now added: In-house homemade packaged meals (like mango spring rolls. nom nom. :), Freshly brewed Hub coffee Fresh baked cookies. Recipes online. As if that wasn’t enough, they have started a series of free workshops. The first was wreth making. The next one is Beginning sewing, and the one after that Gluten Free Baking. I have no doubt that they will reach capacity. Email amber@greatbasinfood.coop Email Amber early,...
Read MoreCanning: Going Back To Basics In The Kitchen
A guest post by Sheri Mc Laughlin. The Pioneers did it. More than likely your own grandmother did it. For generations preserving your own food was not only a useful skill, but a necessity. If you hadn’t preserved enough food for yourself and your family, you would not survive the winter. So why have we abandoned this valuable process? Why preservatives replaced canning The answer is easy- man made additives and preservatives have been put into our food to give it a shelf life of infinity. There is no denying that our lives have become easier, but at what cost? Experts have linked some of these substances with certain health issues and even believe they have influenced the rise of ADHD, Autism, and Cancer. You’ve all heard the joke about the two things that...
Read MorePurslane:The Weed You Can Eat
We have had a very unsightly plot of dirt along our sidewalk for some time now, all because we had a broken sprinkler. Once we fixed the sprinkler and started watering regularly a bunch of green guys started showing up. It actually looked quite nice as it filled in. Eric suggested we leave them and I couldn’t see why not. We were planning on putting lots of different edibles in there anyways and a sign for the neighbors saying something like, “Go ahead. Pick it.” This is a good start, right? As you might know if you are living in Nevada, green is hard to come by. The dusty, dry desert is full of golden yellows and browns. So, we have a bit harder time pulling weeds if they provide us the green foliage we crave. Even the Elm trees that...
Read MoreSwamp Cooler Review: Bonaire Durango 5500
This weekend we installed a new swamp cooler. For months we have been on the hunt for an effective way to cool our house. Central air was not an option for us because we are getting rid of the central ducting throughout the house so that we can finish the basement. I’ll catch you up if you aren’t already familiar with what our house is like. We live in a 1939 brick tudor with poor insulation and very inefficient windows. Since we work at home, we can’t afford to have the upstairs hovering around 85F degrees. Our productivity goes down ten fold. As luck would have it, on a whim on Friday Eric stumbled across the Bonaire Durango 5500 on the web. Thank the good lord. It is a swamp cooler, but it doesn’t look like the humongous sqaure...
Read More10 Reasons to Raise Backyard Chickens
We live in an old historic neighborhood approximately 1 mile from downtown Reno. We had no idea how easy it would be to maintain a small flock of backyard chickens (we have 5). We came up with ten reasons for why you should too! Fresh eggs for breakfast. Our hens seem to lay at around 10 am most days, and we know that if we go out to the hen house at mid morning, the eggs will likely be so fresh that they are still warm when we pick them up from the laying box. Most eggs you buy at the grocery store are about a week old. Do they taste better? Yes, indeed. We are no longer afraid of birds. When you raise chickens from the time they are only a few days old, you get used to handling them and you gain confidence in handling them. Before we had our...
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