I will spend good money if there is a tool I know I will use. But if there is something I am unsure about, or something I feel is overvalued, I can be extraordinarily frugal. Such is the case with bannetons.  My usual strategy is to wait until I find the thing I am looking [...]

When Carmen started guiding wilderness quests, we bought a couple of Mora knives, which are strongly recommended by Canadian bushcraft legend, Mors Kochanski. I have never been a fan of v-grind knives, but I quickly became very impressed with the Morakniv. I also became frustrated with using a folding pocket knife for many work and [...]

I like dill pickles so much that each year as a child I would find a jar of Polskie Ogorkie weighing down the toe of my Christmas stocking. Now I make litres and litres of lactofermented dill pickles every summer, picking the cukes while they are small and submerging them in a salt brine with [...]

In the rainy fall weather of the Canadian Pacific southwest, plants like tomatoes and cucumbers can easily develop blights and mildews before the fruit is ripe. If you wander the back alleys of the once-Italian neighbourhood of Vancouver’s Commercial Drive, you will see many elderly gardeners shelter their tomatoes with overhangs of plastic sheeting. But [...]