Editor’s Note: Ms. Lauren from Craft My Life Away is back with her final installment in her three-part Thanksgiving Tablescaping series. Her first installment ran on Friday and her 2nd piece, FILLED with patterns & instructions, ran yesterday- check it & craft on! -Christina I’m back with Part 3 of my 3 Part Installment obsessing over Thanksgiving Tablescaping. All of the…
Tag: DIY
{edible gift} D.I.Y. Cocktail Bitters
My friend Julie turned me on to homemade infusions years ago. She has a big shelf in her amazing kitchen/dining room filled with homemade bitters, digestifs, infusions, shrubs, and the like. It’s like walking into a delicious apothecary. Julie recently attended the FSC Schenectady Food Swap and brought with her a bunch of her homemade bitters…
{fsc book club} Assignment 2 Recap: Canned Things, Condiments, Spices & Spreads
The FSC Book Club is rocking! We’ve got 92 members signed up on Goodreads and are diving into homemade cookery and pantry staples as an awesome virtual group. For this assignment, we looked at Chapter 3 (Canned Fruits, Vegetables & Beans) and Chapter 4 (Condiment, Spices & Spreads) of The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can…
{recipe recap} D.I.Y. Halloween Candy
Halloween is right around the corner, why not get creative in the kitchen with your chocolate skills or your sugar skills! The FSC Time Machine starts us out with the Becky Show with all of her fabulous posts from last October from her D.I.Y. Halloween Candy Series, then we move into other sugary items that…
{diy projects} Quince Jelly & Membrillo
Quince is an interesting fruit – too tart and hard to eat raw, the fruit turns from green to golden yellow fruit when ripe and grows on small thorned trees. Quince is part of the pear, apple, and rose family, and the ripe fruit smell floral and fragrant. I am lucky to have a neighbor…
{weekend project} Making Tofu From Scratch
When I was in Brooklyn earlier this summer I had fresh silken tofu made by a Japanese restaurant. It was creamy and delicious and I thought, “You can make tofu?” It had never occurred to me. I had to try it. I poked around on the web and found a couple of different recipes for…
{diy treat} Homemade Magic Shell, Demystified
Editor’s Note: Our ‘community voices’ series rolls along with swapper, and now FSC Academy teacher, Leah A. who is back with another hot swap item, Homemade Magic Shell. Food Allergy friendly w/ only three pantry staples- you bet I’m making this asap!-Christina We eat a relatively healthy, no fast food, freshly-made, organic-when-possible diet and have…
{community voices} No-Fuss Slow Cooker Beans
Editor’s Note: One month ago today, Gina M, a local blogger at ModSchooler and a guest contributor at Albany Kid, mentioned the idea of cooking dried beans in a crockpot in a comment. She mentioned it in response to Alexis’ wildly popular piece about White Bean Burgers. The moment I saw the comment I JUMPED.RIGHT.IN….
{Backyard Chickens} yes, you can sex day-old chicks!
If you’ve raised baby chicks or you see some in your future, one of the questions you’ll ask is, “How can you tell the males from the females?” It is commonly thought that you have to wait until they grow bigger and the roosters start acting like they own the place (to put it nicely) to definitively…
{Northeast Grains System} wheat in the ‘hood
Now that the wheat we planted really looks like it might become food, I’m beginning to dread its harvest. I feel like the Little Red Hen’s friend, ready to hide until there’s dinner. Even though I’m the one who convinced my family we should plant our new lot – behind our house in the city…
{gardening} The Busy Person’s Guide to Starting a Perfectly Fine Garden
I love to garden. Maybe you do too. I love to do lots and lots of things. So many things, in fact, that I am too busy to allocate as much time to my garden as I would like. If only I had an extra 2 hours a day… that would make things so much…
{from scratch holidays} Mother’s Day Brunch
Mother’s Day is the weekend (yep… you better rush and get that card for Mom right now!!). In my family we have a tradition, like many families, of doing brunch on Mother’s Day Sunday. My mom’s mom (my “Mamie”) is a mother to ten children, and many of my aunts, uncles and cousins get together…
{avant gardening} Hügelkultur
I spent three years of my childhood in Germany when my father was stationed there in the army. I have very distinct memories of the allotment gardens people cultivated at the edge of town in little individual rented plots of land, each with its own immaculate garden hut for sitting and enjoying the summer days…
{weekend project} DIY Soda Syrup
As spring gets underway and summer looms closer, popsicles, cool salads and fruity cocktails are on my mind. This weekend is Cinco de Mayo, which also happens to fall on Kentucky Derby day – both cause for celebrations in my family! Because I won’t be enjoying any margaritas or cervezas this year with baby #3…
{Northeast Grains System} Vermont Grain Growers Conference
The 8th Annual Vermont Grain Growers Conference was held in Essex, Vermont on March 15th. I traveled north with my friend Howard, who’s been planting grains for years – rye, oats and barley, and last year, wheat – all for home use. About half the 130 people at the conference were also some version of…
