Living Large, Off the Land

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/garden/living-large-off-the-land-kelly-coyne-and-erik-knutzen.html?_r=1

KELLY COYNE and Erik Knutzen do not subsist on a diet of lentils and gloom. Yes, the Los Angeles couple proselytize for a more self-reliant household in their new book, “Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World,” just published by Rodale. And to that end, they include in it illustrated directions for making things like homemade dog food and washable sanitary napkins.

Ms. Coyne sewed one of the latter by making a pad out of her husband’s old flannel shirt. Or, rather, Mr. Knutzen stitched it. “I’m a horrible sewer,” Ms. Coyne said. “Poor Erik.”

But the point is never “self-deprivation in the name of bettering the world,” she said. Like “when you go to a potluck where people have concerns about some issue or another.”

“And because of those concerns,” she added, “they feel obligated to eat a pure vegan diet — not that there’s anything wrong with that — and they talk about the depressing End Times to come. And they serve up a communal meal of lentils. That’s ‘lentils and gloom.’ ”