What is kombucha? An effervescent fermented tea made from regular black/green tea, sugar and the starter culture, also known as the Scoby. What is that alien-looking thing and why do I want it in my tea? Scoby is actually an acronym for “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast”. The bacteria is Acetobacter (a genus of acetic… Continue reading How to make kombucha
A small group of herbology and primitive engineering students from The Human Path and the Wildflower School of Botanical Medicine will be joining the non-profit organization Missions of Grace to travel to remote communities in Nicaragua in November 2012. In Nicaragua, in partnership with local communities, we will be participating in health care clinics along… Continue reading Zombies invade Nicaragua fundraiser event
Rendering fat is much easier than you might expect. All you need is a good stock pot, some heat-proof utensils and bowls, and… some fat to render. It’s a great way to use “waste” products and turn them into either tasty stirfry or, better yet, homemade soap. To get the fat, you can take the… Continue reading Rendering fat for cooking and soapmaking
Usually, yogurt making is fool-proof. This week I made nine pints of yogurt using my food dehydrator, since the outdoor daytime temperatures aren’t anywhere near 100°, which is necessary for porchgurt. I have an Excalibur 4 tray dehydrator like the one in the image here. I take out the trays and there’s just enough space… Continue reading Grainy indoor yogurt
A million uses for pig fat. Well, maybe there aren’t so many. But it was an interesting discussion as part of The Human Path’s recent day-long class on processing large game taught by wildlife biologist Greg Pleasant. In the class, we learned how to humanely kill, bleed out, quarter, butcher, and render an entire wild… Continue reading From hoof to sausage: processing a wild hog from start to finish
When a food dehydrator comes into your life, what do you do? You make jerky! An Excalibur food dehydrator became part of my kitchen gear, thanks to my friend Russ. While I like jerky, I don’t eat it often because most of the time, the stuff you buy at a store is either cheap, unpalatable… Continue reading Making Homemade Beef Jerky
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. On Saturday, in part three of The Human Path’s Hunter-Gatherer class, we learned how to kill, field dress and cook a goose and a rabbit. Yes, we learned how to kill animals for food. It was anything but easy. As anyone knows, I’m a huge… Continue reading Your goose (and rabbit) are cooked
Mother Nature knows what we’re doing, and she’s not happy. As readers of this blog will know, this summer I’ve taken classes covering everything from learning wilderness survival skills to investigating my spirituality to understanding the principles of permaculture. All of these classes have a common goal: they teach those of us who live in… Continue reading We need to stop pissing off Mother Nature
Goat’s milk. A three-day-old fawn. And lots of edible and medicinal plants. These are the things you missed if you weren’t at The Human Path’s class on Foraging Wild Foods and Medicinals, held on private land in Leander. As we toured around the property, our teacher, Sam Coffman, identified and described the uses for a… Continue reading Herbs and goats and deer, oh my!
Homemade yogurt? On a recent episode of The Survival Podcast featuring money-saving tips, a listener wrote in suggesting that people make their own yogurt. And from the moment I heard about it, the idea was intoxicating. The basic concept is taking regular milk and adding a couple tablespoons of existing yogurt for the cultures, and… Continue reading Porchgurt
Surviving the Modern World 