So, even though my Recommended Reading section is badly in need of an update, I will skip updating it so I can spend some more time… reading tonight.  Here’s what I’m reading (yes, all three simultaneously):

Home Cheesemaking
Recipes for 75 homemade cheeses
by Ricki Carroll

OK I am only in the opening chapters of this one so far.  I have not tried any of the recipes yet.  But my next trip to the co-op, I’m picking up some rennet and other supplies so we can try a simple one this weekend or next — maybe mozzarella?  What’s the easiest cheese to start with?

Edible Forest Gardens (a two-volume set, of which I only have the second volume right now)
by Dave Jackie and Eric Toensmeier
I’ve mostly just looked at the pictures so far in this one, but even just one of the diagrams I looked at had me all excited.  It was a drawing of a sample permaculture-style garden, with a chicken coop on one end of it, and then a little enclosed “chicken run” going all the way around the garden.  That way the chickens get some fresh air and exercise, and poop all over the edges of your garden, and also eat bugs.  I love the way permaculture maximizes the benefits of every single part of the mini-ecosystems that are our yards.  If I can talk Adam into it, chickens will be on the agenda for us in 2010.  That is a big if.

The Freedom Manifesto
by Tom Hodgkinson

This is more for pleasure reading.  Maybe the connection to home economics is as tenuous as bowling is to Vietnam, but I’m drawing all sorts of really great insights from this book.  Best of all, it is absolutely hilarious.  Sample advice from the book: Embrace anarchy.  Play a ukelele. I’m finding all sorts of connections between this book, capitalism 1.0, and the idea of creating something (anything) as one of the keys to human contentment.

I am making the commitment, right here, right now to review each one of these as I finish it.  Then I will update my recommended reading page.