Liquid Burdock

Summer Beverages from page 172, Good Housekeeping, Volume 9, 1889

Back in June, I wrote about setting up garden infrastructure to grow burdock root (a.k.a. gobo, Arctium lappa) so that I could have a local source for recipes in Elizabeth Andoh’s Kansha: Celebrating Japan’s Vegan and Vegetarian Traditions (my review of the book is here.).  My plants seem to be doing well, with each one […]

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Breeding Ground: a Visit to Luther Burbank’s Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastapol

(Update, 3/6/17: fixed broken links, updated photos) A few weeks ago, I visited Gold Ridge, Luther Burbank’s experimental farm in Sebastopol while touring the wine country and counting the hours until our reservation at Ubuntu in Napa (which unfortunately closed in late 2011). Luther Burbank may not be a household name, but his work touches […]

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Food Bloggers on the Farm in San Francisco

The surroundings of Alemany Farm in San Francisco do not bring forth feelings of pastoral tranquility. On one side is 12 lanes of high speed traffic (Interstate 280 and Alemany Blvd), which showers the area with waves of noise. On another side, a large housing complex—a vast space of buildings, cars and concrete. Layers of […]

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Introducing the depluminator!

[Updated below] The edge of my driveway is graced with a plum tree that bursts forth with pinkish-white flowers in the spring and a bounty of fruit in the summer. The fruit is weak in flavor with thick skin and a huge pit. But it can make great jam. The plum tree is tall and […]

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