Ellen Lewis

Also, it doesn't seem to show real yams (dioscoria), but labels sweet potatoes (ipomoea, such as the purple one) as yams.
Does anyone know where I can get arracacha seeds?

I just ended up with a bunch of charcoal sticks as a byproduct of another project and have been wondering what to do with them.
They're too appealing to just dump them on the garden like any other biochar. They're a pleasure to draw with, though I really don't sketch much.
I guess they go in the Art Supplies For Someday drawer.
I wonder if they would subtitute for bamboo charcoal to purify a jar of water.
I was firing a few small ceramic pieces in a dutch oven in a fire. I put sticks and leaves inside the dutch oven to see if they would do anything to the surface of the clay. It came out black.
The sticks were cute, they had shrunk down to perfect miniatures of themselves.
They were varied and not identifiable species, picked up from broken branches I had chopped & dropped. Most likely fruit wood (plum, cherry, apple), pecan, spicebush, fig.
I was worried about ruining my dutch oven, but I realized it has a curved bottom & won't work on my induction stove. So I'm no longer likely to use it in the kitchen. The fire took off the seasoning, but the metal seems fine.
I could see the wood gas coming out beneath the lid of the dutch oven and catching fire.

I make very strong lavender and rosemary tea for people with a cold. A small handful each of lavender and rosemary, about a quart of water, steeped between ten minutes and ten hours, depending on how soon you need it.
I also make lavender syrup - strong tea, strained, with sugar added 1:1 by volume, then boiled briefly. It is a nice seasoning for lemonade or other things that need sweetening.
Lavender vinegar (tea that got too old and fermented or lavender infused in white vinegar) makes a good cleaning solution.

I made gravlax once. It came out way too salty. I'm afraid to try again with less salt. I guess the answer is less time, but that, too, is a little scary. (Probably shouldn't be, I eat sushi. But this has to last longer, so I dunno.)
I just read that gravlax used to be fermented, but no longer is, so I suppose the lox I'm accustomed to is not the actual pickled variety.
I don't fish, so it was just an experiment with store-bought fish.

My personal redwood grove fanstasy:
I was on the island of Hawai'i, and saw overgrown, seemingly abandoned eucalyptus stands.
I wanted to plant redwoods in the interstices of the thicket of blue gum and see if they could grow up tall in all that rain and shade and finally overtop and shade out the eucalypts.

also:
ginger flower buds

There's a variety of ginger (myoga) that is grown specifically for the edible flower buds.
I'd remove it and experiment with eating it.

Boil up an appropriate quantity of whole wheat macaroni.
Grate good cheddar or gruyere at about an ounce or two per serving of pasta.
Make a slightly thinnish bechamel, maybe two or three of cups to a pound of pasta. Season as desired, maybe a little towards the salty side.
Add the cheese to the béchamel. It doesn't need to get smooth.
Sauté an onion and some mushrooms in butter or, if you prefer, olive oil. Or if you eat pork, cook a few strips of bacon, sauté the onion and mushrooms in the bacon fat, then cut up the bacon and add it also.
Mix the sautéed stuff with the pasta, then mix with the sauce.
Put it in a shallow baking dish.
Bake slowly until getting brown on top.