I love winter.  Or rather, I love it until about the end of February, at which point I want spring to come.  But right now I'm enjoying cozy days in front of the fire (actually, I'm finishing a book, so mostly they are freezing days up in my chilly office, but since this is book #5 written at least partly over a cold season, I'm used to it - at least I now the fire is there ;-))), knitting, waiting for my seed order to come, thinking up other things to put on a few additional seed orders (Brad sent me a link to this wonderful resource if you are looking for something specific - Mother Earth…
Permaculture books telling you how to grow things abound.   They are many, varied and wonderful.  For some reason, however, permaculture books telling you how to EAT what you grow in interesting, creative and delicious ways are not, in fact, very abundant.   This is a pretty serious gap, given that in many cases, it is actually easier for people to take up gardening than it is to fully figure out what to do with the abundance of things they produce.  While most of us know what to do with an occasional handful of kale or greenbeans, the culinary education (poor and limited) of most of us just…
Since 2006, I've been making annual predictions about what would happen in the coming year, and well, this year, I didn't.  Part of it was because I spent a week travelling and had limited time and internet access, but if I'd really wanted to, I could have made it happen.  The project of prediction, however, has come to make me a little queasy, particularly watching the degree of anxiety brought up for some people by empty-headed projections like the Mayan apocalypse. I've always prefaced any predictions that I make with the fact that you should remember what you are paying for my opinion and…
Brian Kaller has a fascinating and lovely essay about talking to his daughter about things that aren't real, or aren't here now.  He begins from the point of Santa Claus, but the essay is a brilliant meditation on how a parent can talk to their children about the losses in the natural world in an age-appropriate way that doesn't terrify them. Since she was a baby, almost every night, I told her stories about the natural world that existed until recently – trees so large many men could not form a chain around them, sloths that could look in her second-story window, beavers the size of cars and…
How about we honor two wonderful, autistic children who died by NOT speculating that Adam Lanza had autism (which has never been confirmed, so maybe we should wait and see whether it is actually true or not) and NOT assuming that people with autism are dangerous?  The only people with KNOWN autism in that school were the victims. Joey was autistic and severely apraxic. She could not speak, yet she touched the lives of so many around her: teachers, therapists, friends, neighbors, all loved and cherished her. Joey was social and affectionate; she smiled, she loved hugs, and she even had a…
After recent events, I received a request to repost my security, safety and weapons. I won't post the whole thing, but I wanted to include the rant that I ALWAYS preface any discussion of guns with in my classes, my book and on my blogs. I am not anti-gun.  They are a useful tool in my trade, mostly used to put down dying and suffering animals.  I approve of hunting of overpopulated animals, although  I don't hunt myself (grew up around it, though, and ate my share of Brunswick stew with squirrel in it).  I think in some hands, particularly those of older women in dangerous urban areas, guns…
From NPR a map of the most dangerous disaster-prone areas in the US.  
It was at the moment that my sons were assigning our official titles that I realized that I live in G.R.O.S.S.  Their father was "The Supreme Dictator of the Universe."  Isaiah at 9 deemed himself "El Tigre Numero Uno." (The fact that he is not actually a tiger has nothing to do with it, I'm told.)  Simon wanted to be "Imperial Gladiator and Prime Minister Tward."  Asher dithered over several possible choices, each more grandiose than the other.  And your blogiste?  Well, as Isaiah put it "Someone has to be the Bossy Evil Space Crab, and you are the bossiest Mommy." Those of you who fondly…
I usually allow my honorary older brother, John Michael Greer to debunk the idea of the apocalypse, Mayan and otherwise.  He's even written a (very funny and, as usual, brilliant) book about it, and he's the master of historical examples in which everyone was pretty sure the world was going to end and it didn't.  While I tend to think that we are closer to a collapse (a word I use in its technical sense, meaning big step down in complexity and function) than most people admit, I am very far from thinking that this will be the end of the world, a term that I think is largely meaningless unless…
One of the questions I get asked a lot by people new to food storage and local eating is "But what about my COFFEE!!!???"  Unless you are fortunate enough to live in a coffee-growing region, (which a majority of my readers don't) local coffee ain't gonna happen - and while chicory has its adherents, I'm told it isn't the same (Eric and I are actually among the very few people we know who went through graduate school without ever getting addicted to coffee ;-)).  Neither will true tea (herb teas can be produced almost everywhere), vanilla, many tropical spice, citrus, olive oil, etc... for…
That would have been the title of _Making Home_ except it is way, way too wordy, but that's the gist of my book - that we don't have a choice but to change our way of life, so we might as well find the best possible way to do it.    The long version (and a lot of details about how) is in the book.  This is the short one. ;-) I spend much of my life making the case for changing one’s life (and not just one’s life – for supporting political and social change that is associated with it) in fairly radical ways, very quickly. I spend a lot of my time writing about this, and periodically I get on a…
I probably won't get to look at them until after Isaiah's birthday and our Chanukah party next weekend, but the seed catalogs are piling up, and I'm starting to think about gardens again.  I can't wait to sink down into the couch with a stack of catalogs and dream. This was a tough year for gardening - I was already behind in early spring because of the final push to get _Making Home_ out.  On May 1, K. and C. arrived, and it took the better part of a month before things normalized.  That was ok, I thought, the fall garden will be SPECTACULAR, I'll just put my energies there, and get serious…
I've been making a lot of quick breads lately - partly it is the season, and they freeze and store well. They make good gifts, good afternoon snacks for the kids, good "Oh, crap, we're just about out of bread and I need it ASAP" solutions and other happy things.  Quick breads, for those of you who don't bake them, are any kind of bread that doesn't require a long rising time.  Most of them use baking soda or yeast.  They include sweet breads like cranberry and pumpkin, soda breads, biscuits, muffins, scones, etc... There are tons of recipes for these, including some great ones here (raspberry…
A friend of mine who volunteered at a shelter in New York City told me this story over Thanksgiving.  The shelter she worked in responded to the range of people affected by the crisis.  Many of them, as always in a crisis, were those who were already struggling and marginalized - illegal immigrants afraid to go anywhere else, the already-homeless whose usual shelters and places of refuge were closed or underwater, the mentally and physically ill who had to be evacuated from hospitals in the flood zone.  Many of the rest were storm evacuees from some of the city's most expensive neighborhoods…
There are, of course, a lot of critical issues going on right now, and you can count on your blogiste to keep you up on them.  Besides the fallout from Sandy, crisis of arctic sea ice and all the agricultural issues that need to be brought to the  light, it can be hard to keep up.  But I think we all can agree what really is critical at this moment is this:  What are we all going to eat when the zombies come?   How will we go on now that that perfect survival food, the Twinkie, is no longer available?  Particularly since Israel and Gaza seem bent on bringing the zombies in extra-soon, before…
So what's on for Thanksgiving dinner at your place?  Wanna pass on that favorite recipe that you simply can't get away with not making? Here's the (still slightly tentative) menu for us - w e just added a few more guests at the last minute, and I might find myself compelled to add more food, even though it probably already excessive.  But hey, this is my favorite cooking project of the year! Provided by our friends of Chinese heritage who feel that turkey is a poor substitute for duck: Chicken bao (chinese style dim sum buns) Peking duck My portion: Turkey roasted with 100 cloves of garlic…
So the kids didn't come into care yesterday, which means we can go back to being our usual slacker selves about putting away the legos,  tinker toys and other choking hazards - until the next batch of little ones arrived.   I admit to a mix of relief and sorrow.  Relief that the children in question are not in such dire straits that they have to leave their home and family.  Relief also because even though I'm loving having a baby around again, I'm not sure I really wanted two of them, plus two toddlers. On the other hand, I really feel like our house is too empty right now - we have space…
Last Friday afternoon my mother and step-mother came to visit.  My mother had surgery on her foot back in the summer and has had a long, slow recovery, and is only now able to travel and drive, so this was the first visit in nearly six months.  As we sat around the table, we joked that it would be a great day for our family to get a phone call about a foster placement. Five minutes afterwards, my mother was walking by the phone when it rang and she called out "It is the county!"  I laughed, thinking she was joking.  She wasn't.  It was a call about a sibling group of five kids.  We said yes…
This essay hits the nail on the head, and could pretty much have appeared in the New York Times, minus some vocabulary: “I was just watching a CNN news story about how much damage Sandy has caused in comparison to Katrina, Ike, or last year’s storm that ravaged the Northeast, and it dawned on me: ‘Ah, okay, being a human being on Planet Earth, pretty much no matter where you are, now involves the threat of one day having your home, city, or country decimated in a matter of hours by a severe weather event,’” Detroit resident Stacy Hillman said. “Looking at images of cities—actual American…
The cover of _Green Sex_ is now out (and you can pre-order if you want!):  The book will be out next summer.