Chelsea Green Blog
Food & Drink
Winter in the Forest Beer: Creating Unique Drinks from Nature’s Ingredients
The art of brewing can explore far beyond the usual ingredients into a vast and luminous galaxy of wild and cultivated fruits, berries, grains, and herbs, which once provided a variety of fermented drinks as broad as the world. Now fermentation fans and home brewers can rediscover these “primitive” drinks and their unique flavors in, the…
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Hunger Moon-Inspired Recipe: Roasted Root Vegetables
If you love to cook with fresh produce but happen to live in a climate where it’s nearly impossible to access during the winter months, we feel ya! Here in the northeast, chilling winds and heaps of snow make it hard to leave the house, let alone grow fresh produce, but that doesn’t mean we…
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The wonderful world of lemons
We all need to give lemons some more credit because they are truly one of the most versatile fruits. Think of how many foods and drinks you can incorporate lemons into. If you live somewhere warm and sunny year round, you better get outside and start looking for some lemon trees (we recommend Meyer lemons!).…
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Recipe: Salmon Cakes with Lemon Pesto
This salmon cake recipe makes for a simple and flavorful dinner. Delicious, golden-brown patties made with salmon are a tasty alternative to crab cakes. Need a side dish? Check out our recipes for Summer Vegetable Tian and Ginger Carrots. The following excerpt is from The Heal Your Gut Cookbook by Hilary Boynton and Mary G. Brackett. It has been adapted for the…
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The Life of Patience Gray: Gathering Honey from a Weed
Iconoclastic food writer, forager, and force of nature Patience Gray always found the good in the simple. In Fasting and Feasting, Gray’s biographer Adam Federman discovers that her life was never simple. “Struck by Patience Gray’s mind, her vision and her prose, Federman went in search of her past. . . . He’s done the…
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Agroforestry Versus Permaculture: Which Approach to Use for a Community Food Forest
Ok, so we’ve gone over some basics of community food forests: Now it’s time to figure out how to plan one. There are two schools of thought on the best approach to building a community food forest: agroforestry or permaculture. The former offers a science-based approach while the latter incorporates elements of social design. Both…
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Extracting Cannabis into Oil or Butter
Keep reading for a tried and true process for making cannabis oils and butters. These can be put in almost any food or drink, though you will want to carefully test your creation out to determine proper dosage. The following is an excerpt from The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements…
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The Magic of Beer: Science Behind The Miracle Brew
Think back to science class… remember those lessons on photosynthesis? We sure don’t, which is unfortunate as we now know that it is crucial to the beer making process. Perhaps if we realized that simple biochemistry could turn barley into brews, we would have paid better attention. The following excerpt is from Miracle Brew by Pete Brown.…
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Thanksgiving Traditions, Memories, and Celebrations
The holiday season is a time for family, food, friends, celebrations, and reminiscing about beloved traditions. To get in the spirit, we’ve asked a few members of our CGP family to share some of their favorite holiday moments. Maybe they’ll spark nostalgia or perhaps give you new ideas to try, either way, we wish everyone…
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Fat is NOT the Enemy: What You Think Could Harm Your Health
For decades, we’ve been told that fat is the enemy, that it is harmful to our health and well-being. But the reality is, fat, or certain types of fat, when incorporated correctly into our diets, can actually have powerful health benefits. Take it from Domini Kemp, who for years avoided fat but loaded up on…
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3 Steps to Start Your Plants Off Right
How you handle your seeds and your practices around seeding is your first chance to get your plants off to a good start and help them achieve their full potential. Ben and Penny Hewitt, authors of The Nourishing Homestead, have developed a three-step process which starts with inoculating the seeds, then sowing them in high-quality…
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Medlar Cream Cake: so simple yet so good
If you’re looking for a simple cake to serve guests, try this medlar cream cake. What’s a medlar? The fruit of the medlar tree, Mespilus germanica, tastes like lightly spiced apple butter scooped soft right out of the russeted skin. The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in California has a small but significant collection of…
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Recipe: Summer Herb Flower Vinegar
Olivia’s mom, Lola, is famous for her potato salad that seems so simple, but has a certain je ne sais quoi—the secret ingredient: chive-flower-infused vinegar. She recalls, “As a child I was enchanted by the apothecary bottles lined up on our kitchen shelves, stuffed with purple pompoms—I just knew there was magic happening inside.” By…
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Cooking with Mesquite: Ancient Nourishment
Mesquite has been a staple in desert dwellers’ diet for far longer than maize or even livestock. With its nutritional value (it’s filled with both complex carbs and protein!) and endless possibilities for preparation, it’s no wonder it was once an integral source of sustenance for such a large region. If you happen to get…
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Recipe: Barbecued Eggplant Stacks with Coyote Mint Sauce and Chèvre
With summer in full swing, many are making good use of their outdoor grills. Tender grass fed steaks or free range chicken are often the go-to options, but the possibilities for a grilled meal are endless. At the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, a summer favorite is Barbecued Eggplant Stacks with Coyote Mint sauce and…
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Why You Need to Drink Wet-Hopped Beer Right Now
Wet-hopped beer is the ultimate in seasonal and local brews. It is made from fresh hops picked right off the bine in order to capture the aromatic hop flavor when it is most potent. The tricky part is fresh hops have virtually no shelf life, so brewers must spring into action as soon as the hops…
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Solar Cooker & Dehydrator: How to Design Your Own
In today’s world, nearly everything we use, from phones and computers to cars and kitchen appliances, requires energy derived from fossil fuels. Wouldn’t it be nice to offset some of that energy use by harnessing the renewable power of the sun? Josh Trought, founder of D Acres—an educational center in New Hampshire that researches, applies,…
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Tracing the History of Cheddar with Cheesemonger Gordon Edgar
Cheddar is the world’s most ubiquitous and beloved cheese. You can find it nearly everywhere from macaroni and mousetraps to McDonald’s and mansions. Any cheese with so many fans has a story to tell, and Gordon Edgar is just the cheesemonger to tell it. In his book, Cheddar, Edgar traces the unexplored history of America’s most iconic cheese.…
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Cheesemaking: An All-Natural, Traditional Approach
Get ready to change the way you look at cheese. David Asher, author of The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, practices and preaches a traditional, but increasingly countercultural, way of cheesemaking —one that is natural and intuitive, grounded in ecological principles and biological science. Most DIY cheesemaking books are hard to follow and call for the…
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A Mini-Festo for Earth Day – Rebuild the Foodshed
For the days leading up to Earth Day in years past, author Philip Ackerman-Leist runs a Twitter MiniFesto campaign – each day sending out a new tweet designed to spark conversation and pass along some lessons he learned whilst working on his book, Rebuilding the Foodshed. You might also know Philip as the author of…
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Traditional Italian Sponge Cake Soaked in Liqueur
Is your happy hour missing something? You’re sitting there, enjoying a glass of wine, a pint of beer, or a snifter of scotch — depending upon your tastes. The cares of the week are melting away as you slip under the spell of alcohol, one of the human race’s most ancient and most reliable methods…
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A1 Cow’s Milk May Account for a Range of Serious Illnesses
The following is an excerpt from Devil in the Milk: Illness, Health, and the Politics of A1 and A2 Milk by Keith Woodford. It has been adapted for the Web. What North Americans should be concerned about is that North American milk is very high in A1 beta-casein, and no one is doing anything about…
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Grow Berries in Your Low-Light Urban Space
The following is an excerpt from Fresh Food from Small Spaces by R. J. Ruppenthal. It has been adapted for the Web. A central problem for many of us who garden in the city is a lack of light. This is covered extensively in the vegetable chapters. I mention it again here only to note…
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Replace Your Soap with Soapy Plants
Sick of chemical-filled soaps that leave your hands feeling dirtier than before you washed them? Then we’ve got the project for you! Do it yourself soap with soapy plants! It’s as simple as adding water. The following project is from When Technology Fails by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the web. There is…
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