We’ve written many times before about the fantastic Canal House Cookbook series, but this summer Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton took their work to a new level by hosting the first annual Smallholding Festival in Ottsville, Pennsylvania. The festival featured a number of skill-shares and do-it-yourself exhibitions including cheese-making, beekeeping, canning, bread-baking, and spit-roasting. Also on-hand was Margo True, the author of The One-Block Feast: An Adventure in Food from Yard to Table
Even though we’re telling you about this event after it’s happened, you can actually bring a few of the exhibitions directly to your own home. The Smallholding Festival website features four free pdfs with step-by-step instructions for food-based projects ranging from fairly simple—“No-Knead Bread” and “Making Brown Sugar Cured Bacon”—to the more ambitious “How to Build an Earthen Wood Fired Pizza Oven”and “Make a Spit Roaster in a Few (Easy-ish) Steps.”
If anyone rigs up a spit-roast or pizza oven in their backyard, we hope you’ll send us the pictures…
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canal house cooking: fast, in-the-pod peas, artichoke-style
canal house cooking Vol. 4 for summer’s bumper crop
canal house cooking vol 6: crax & butter for dinner!!!
d-i-y pizza oven
more on d-i-y wood ovens: books, sites, recipes…
