DIG IN
The latest articles from Chelsea Green and our authors: offering tips and techniques about how you can bring our books to life in your kitchen, backyard, or community.
Sage and Chili Butter on Fried Eggs (and everything else!)
Spice up your fried eggs with this delicious caramelized sage and chili butter! Not only is this butter great on eggs, but also on pasta, roasted veggies, and an array of other great meals. Much like the sage chili butter in its kitchen, Towpath has a way of enhancing everything it touches. From planting gardens…
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Wine Pairings for the Holidays
(Photography by Deirdre Heekin) As the holidays get closer, it’s good to know what kind of wine to serve on the right occasion with the right meal, right? Deirdre Heekin, winemaker and author of An Unlikely Vineyard, is here to share some of her favorite wines along with food pairing suggestions. Her selections include a…
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The Energy Consumption Crisis
At the rate humanity is currently burning fossil fuels, we will create an uninhabitable earth long before we run out. So if the pressure of a finite resource doesn’t push us towards a renewable energy revolution, what will? And what will this revolution look like? This is an excerpt from A Small Farm Future by Chris…
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A Book for the Fruit Nerd on Your Holiday Gift List
Have a fruit nerd on your holiday shopping list this year? Then give the gift that Booklist calls, “a thorough investigation of one wonderful fruit”—The Book of Pears by Joan Morgan. In this one-of-a-kind guide, noted pomologist and fruit historian Joan Morgan (The Book of Apples) has researched and crafted a definitive account of the pear’s…
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Big Bang 2: The Debtonator
(Photo: The ‘debt in transit’ van, filled with paper notes representing £1.2 million of toxic debt, mid-explosion: Big Bang 2. Credit: Graeme Truby.) Art hacks life when two filmmakers launch a project to cancel more than £1m of high-interest debt from their local community. Bank Job is a white-knuckle ride into the dark heart of…
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Try Homemade Mead For a Very Viking Thanksgiving!
A thousand years ago, the people who lived the Viking lifestyle enjoyed a myriad of foods and beverages and threw feasts that lasted several days to show off what they had stockpiled throughout the harvest season. Bring the Viking spirit of celebration to your Thanksgiving table this year with a traditional batch of spiced orange…
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How Loving Labor Leads to a Brighter Future: Sourcing a Solution
Drawing on a vast range of sources from across a multitude of disciplines, A Small Farm Future analyses the complex forces that make societal change inevitable; explains how low-carbon, locally self-reliant agrarian communities and loving labor can empower us to successfully confront these changes head on; and explores the pathways for delivering this vision politically. Challenging…
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What You Didn’t Learn About “Leaves of Grass” in School
In her book Outrages, Naomi Wolf shows how legal persecutions of writers, and of men who loved men affected Symonds and his contemporaries, including Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, and the painter Simeon Solomon. All the while, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was illicitly crossing the Atlantic and finding its way…
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Treating Addiction: From Opium Poppy to Morphine to Naltrexone
LDN, originally prescribed in higher doses as a treatment for opioid addiction, works by blocking opioid receptors, thereby stimulating the production of endorphins, mitigating the inflammatory process, and stabilizing the immune response. Prescribed off-label and administered in small daily doses, this generic drug has proven useful in treating many different ailments. This excerpt was taken…
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Understanding your Microbiome: The Garbage in Your Gut
When treating multiple sclerosis, Dr. Michaël Friedman does not promise a miracle cure but instead provides the personal prescriptions he follows that are delaying the disease process and radically improving his quality of life, including dietary measures and supplements to support a healthy microbiome and hormone therapies that can reduce neuroinflammation and possibly promote neurorestoration.…
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Thanksgiving Feast: A Twist on the Traditional New England Dinner
If you’re looking for something new and different to serve this Thanksgiving, Chef Evan Mallett of the Black Trumpet restaurant in Portsmouth, NH has some ideas. From his book, Black Trumpet, Mallett has selected three traditional, New England-inspired dishes that are sure to add some new flavors to your Thanksgiving feast. The following is an…
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Looking for Answers
Since his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis a decade ago, Dr. Friedman has been searching for a cure for the disease. After years of research, he realized that he had some of the answers right in his naturopathic medicine toolbox, and others, surprisingly, lay in the realm of conventional medicine. Before all of this, he first…
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What Does a Sustainable Future Look Like?
In a time of looming uncertainties, what would a truly resilient society look like? Farmer and social scientist Chris Smaje argues that organizing society around small-scale farming offers the soundest, most sustainable, and most reasonable response to climate change and other crises of civilization—and will yield humanity’s best chance at survival. The following excerpt is…
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All Hail the Beaver, Mighty Linchpin of the Natural World
Ben Goldfarb and Derek Gow have the conversation you didn’t know you needed. This interview originally appeared on Literary Hub. The beaver — yes, really, the beaver — is Animalia’s most generous member. By building woody dams and engineering ponds, beavers furnish habitat for just about every creature that flies, walks, and swims in North…
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A Man, a Mission, and a Grumpy Beaver
Derek Gow knows a thing or two about beavers; as a farmer-turned-ecologist, he has spent close to 20 years reintroducing beavers to the wilds of Britain. Rewilding is no easy task, a large part of the process includes importing, quarantining, and assisting in the beavers’ reestablishment. And after so many years, Gow has met quite…
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Break Up Boring Dinners with Lamb and Hummus!
Have you been cooking the same handful of meals over, and over, and over again? We’ve all been there– life gets busy and your creativity in the kitchen is one of the first things to go. Well, we’re here to break you out of that boring dinner rut with this tasty recipe for Crispy Lamb…
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The Power of Fermentation: A Bubbling Transformation
Fermentation revivalist Sandor Ellix Katz has spent a lot of time thinking about fermentation. Stemming from his personal obsession with all things fermented, in his newest book, Katz meditates on his art and work, drawing connections between microbial communities and aspects of human culture: politics, religion, social and cultural movements, art, music, sexuality, identity, and…
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Coronavirus: Facts and Figures
There are a lot of questions flying around about the current coronavirus; How does Covid-19 compare with previous coronaviruses and the flu virus? What do infection numbers and the death rate tell us? Does the race for vaccine development make sense? What are the chances of success? Will the vaccine be safe? It is only…
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RECIPE: It’s The Perfect Time For Rosehip Jam
All good things must come to an end– and that includes warm summer nights. But with the close of summer comes overnight frosts, the ideal time to gather plump, ripe rosehips. A rosehip’s sweet, unique flavor is perfect on morning toast. There are endless variations on ingredients and many ways to make rosehip jam. Here are…
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Fermentation as Metaphor
If you’re a foodie, then you’re probably familiar with fermentation; sauerkraut, kimchi, cheese, and beer are just a few of the delicious foods that rely on it. Now, what if you thought about fermentation not just as a physical process, but as a metaphorical one? The following is an excerpt from Fermentation as Metaphor by…
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Discovering John Addington Symonds
In 1861, John Addington Symonds, a twenty-one-year-old student at Oxford who already knew he loved and was attracted to men, hastily wrote out a seeming renunciation of the long love poem he’d written to another young man. In her book Outrages, Naomi Wolf chronicles the struggle and eventual triumph of Symonds—who would become a poet,…
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A Realm of One’s Own
There’s nothing more exciting than discovering a hidden gem, which is precisely how many people describe Towpath. If you were strolling down the Regent’s Canal in Hackney during the winter months, you’d never suspect a restaurant sat behind Towpath’s shutters. To add to its intrigue, this unassuming little eatery is advertised exclusively by word of…
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Chronic Skin Conditions: A New Approach to Treatment
A drug that is simultaneously affordable, devoid of severe side effects, and applicable to a wide range of diseases is not often found in the modern pharmaceutical landscape. But as medical professionals and researchers alike continue to discover, Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) boasts this remarkable combination. LDN, originally prescribed in higher doses as a treatment…
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Beavers: A Short History
If you’re not already a “Beaver Nut”, Derek Gow has a couple of reasons you should be: Firstly, land that housed beavers was historically preferred by British settlers for its natural abundance. Secondly, beavers show a lot of love and attention to their very cute babies. Finally, they’re crucial to the well being of our…
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Okra Marshmallow Delights
Did you know you can make marshmallows out of this peculiar plant? Anything is possible when it comes to okra! Whether it’s a treat you’re creating at home with your family or an on-the-go snack, okra marshmallows will certainly become one of your favorites. Check out this amazing recipe by Katrina Blair. The following is…
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