The Homegrown Cigar
Let me preface this by saying I don’t smoke. (Militantly so.) But I do have to understand how everything is made. So when I learned that the flowering tobacco I had […]
Category Archives: Homesteading
Old-Fashioned Birch Beer Soda
Scrape black birch and it smells like wintergreen. Boil it and you’ve got the basis for an old-fashioned Americana soda that’s somewhere in the root beer family.
Mint Hydrosol
Sometimes called floral waters, hydrosols are a very rudimentary eau de toilette. Or a different way to think about it: the beginner’s foray into essential oil extraction. Common uses for hydrosols […]
Apple Cider Vinegar
I go through a lot of apple cider vinegar. Like, a lot. But buying the good stuff was starting to add up, and I thought: Can’t I just make this myself? So […]
Pure Mint Extract
Extracts are one of those things where the moment you realize how simple they are to make, you kick yourself for ever thinking you needed to buy them. This example […]
Homemade Thai Chili Sauce
As easy to make as it is delicious. This raw, 3-ingredient Thai chili sauce is so good, you’ll never buy Sriracha again. Ingredients: Thai chili peppers Garlic cloves Apple Cider […]
Urban Farming: Vertical Tomatoes
Here in New York, a garden is a lot like a walk-in closet — most of us gave up praying for one ages ago. But for those of us hell-bent […]
Soap Rebatching
Soap rebatching: because sometimes s#!t happens. Why rebatch soap? Well, for any number of reasons. Maybe it cooled too quickly the first round and still needs a couple more hours. […]
Marigold-Pumice Cleansing Face Scrub
Imagine my surprise one summer to learn there was a considerable difference between marigolds and pot marigolds. (Tagetes vs calendula, to be precise.) I’d been hoping to grow my own […]
Urban Farming: Mesclun Greens
Living in New York, no light can be something we have a lot of. So I say, take control of something you have no control over! Turn that shade into an […]
The Crunchy Urbanite 