Pineapple Vinegar
A simple recipe for homemade vinegar that costs less than $1 to make because it uses the scraps of the pineapple that would normally be thrown away! Materials needed: Several smaller bottles with lids (recycled vinegar or wine bottles work well) Large wide-mouth jar Piece of cloth to cover jar Ingredients: Skins and core of […]
Water Kefir Soda
Water kefir is a naturally carbonated, probiotic fermented drink made from the tibicos culture, also known as water kefir grains or bug. It is technically a SCOBY, a symbiotic community of bacteria and yeast, and can be purchased online, or if you’re lucky enough to know someone who has some, ask them to share a […]
Savory Flaxseed Crackers
One of the future projects on the list for volunteers at the ranch is to design and build a solar dehydrator for drying herbs, seeds, and tasty snacks like these Savory Flaxseed Crackers. In the meantime, we’re using an Excalibur electric dehydrator borrowed from Anamaya. Ingredients 2 cups whole raw flaxseed 3 cups water 1 […]
Tarta de Coliflor y Queso
Here at Rancho Delicioso, the volunteers take turns preparing lunch for each other on workdays. When my turn came up in the rotation this week, I decided to try to recreate a favorite of mine from an internship that I did on another farm in Costa Rica last year – Cauliflower Cheese Pie, or Tarta […]
Making an Herb Garden – Herbaceous Goodness (Part IV)
And then there were herbs… With the rocks in place, the next step was to start building up the soil. I dug a hole and filled it up twice with water to check drainage and found that it wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be. Still, we dug about a foot down into […]
Making an Herb Garden – The Design (Part II)
As one of the first volunteer projects on the farm we were given a rectangular plot of land and asked to create an herb garden. Geoff requested a formal layout for the garden, one that would be functional and hopefully productive as well as beautiful. I remembered from my Permaculture course a classic design called […]