Cooking a fresh pumpkin for baking - it's easy! September and October are always SO busy for us. We become slaves to the garden and the freezer and canner. Have to get all that fresh produce, including fresh pumpkin, taken care of! It makes for a lot of very tasty eating over the winter months. Still, I sometimes ask myself just who had the bright idea of planting all this stuff? On the other hand, it is awfully nice to look around on a January morning and find that we have all I need to ... Read More about How to Cook a Fresh Pumpkin
Food Preservation
Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickles
Bread and Butter Pickles you don't have to can! When I originally published this recipe, an unbelievable 10 years ago, I was an avowed Bread and Butter Pickle hater. Haters gonna hate, am I right? But not anymore. I changed my tune, I switched horses in mid-stream, and I turned over a new leaf. I can admit when I have been wrong, and I was SO wrong about this. What, you might ask is all of this drama about? It was Bread and Butter Pickles that I disliked. I would have said hated, ... Read More about Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickles
Easy Tomato Sauce for Canning & Freezing
An Easy Tomato Sauce is a must if you garden It's that time of year with which I have a love/hate relationship. The tomatoes are starting to come in the back door in multiple 5-gallon buckets now. That means that no matter what else is going on, I have to deal with them. Mostly because we only have so many buckets, and there are plenty more tomatoes where those came from. This easy sauce method helps me get through a lot of tomatoes quickly. It's been a challenging year in the ... Read More about Easy Tomato Sauce for Canning & Freezing
Preserving the Harvest: How to Freeze Blueberries
Where we live, here in Upstate NY, it's blueberry time, which means preserving some of that wonderful harvest. Freezing is a fast and easy way to save that summer goodness for later in the year. I'm bringing this post up from a few years ago, for a fresh audience [and maybe for you to enjoy again!]. Once blueberries start ripening, there's a pretty short window of opportunity to get them picked and dealt with. You can only eat so many fresh berries. You might want to check out a few ways ... Read More about Preserving the Harvest: How to Freeze Blueberries
Garlic Scape Chimichurri Sauce
This is a refreshed post, brought up from the archives because the garlic scapes are ready to harvest just now and this is an amazing way to use them. I hope everyone enjoys it this time too. While I was away, constantly inhaling that unmatchable perfume that is only found at the top of a newborn baby's head, Larry had to cut all of the garlic scapes from our over 200 heads of garlic. Garlic scapes are the flower of a garlic plant, and leaving them in place robs the garlic bulb of ... Read More about Garlic Scape Chimichurri Sauce
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Concord Grape Preserves {no pectin recipe}
Concord Grape Preserves with Deeper Flavor, and Less Sugar It has been a crazy summer around here - lots of work outdoors, training a new puppy, doing Farmer's Market every week, and still finding time for family visits, and getting all of our produce saved for winter. It's not left much time for blogging I'm afraid, but now that things are getting a little calmer, I am feeling like sharing some recipes again. The grapes that went into these marvelous Concord Grape Preserves, came from vines ... Read More about Concord Grape Preserves {no pectin recipe}
Quick Pickled Radishes
It does not get much more seasonal that fresh radishes. We've been enjoying a bumper crop of them this spring. A few springs ago, I shared this Sauteed Radishes with Sea Salt & Lime recipe, that we still enjoy at least a few times each spring. Cooking radishes does something really special, that we never dreamed of till we tried it, so I hope you will check that recipe out too. And I am always happy to eat freshly pulled radishes with just a bit of coarse salt, or sliced very thin and ... Read More about Quick Pickled Radishes
Jalapeno Garlic Dill Pickles
I think this is the busiest time of year for any gardener. As the summer winds down, we have to get everything put up for winter - currently that consists mostly of squishing tons of tomatoes into various jars and running the canner for hours every day. I try to mix of what I am making, so it doesn't become too tedious - today it's crushed tomatoes. But before I move over to the kitchen to get those going, I want to share my fast and easy recipe for these Jalapeno Garlic Dill Pickles. It's a ... Read More about Jalapeno Garlic Dill Pickles
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Raspberry Preserves {no pectin recipe}
It has been a mighty busy summer around here. A good busy though. In addition to having a bigger garden and selling at the Farmer's Market, we found a new church that we are trying, I got into essential oils [okay, that should probably say I became instantly obsessed with essential oils!] and now, any day, we expect to be called suddenly to drive 3 hours south to watch our granddaughter while her little brother gets born! I am trying to get everything from the garden put up for winter in between ... Read More about Raspberry Preserves {no pectin recipe}
Easy Citrus Jam
I'm a little late getting this recipe posted, but it is definitely not too late to make it yourself! There is still plenty of fresh citrus in the stores this spring, and you can change up what you use to suit what you can find. I wanted to get this posted before I left to spend a week in Arizona with my folks, sister and brothers, but as so often happens, time got away from me and I am not getting to until now. I hope it's right on time for you though! This time of year, you may find that your ... Read More about Easy Citrus Jam
Kale Walnut Pesto
One thing that enjoys a cool summer is kale. Man, do we have kale! Usually, we have a lot of kale early in the summer, and then again in the fall, but this summer the spring kale never tried to go to seed, so it is still going strong. Every morning, when I go down to tend to the chickens, I make a detour through the garden to grab a handful of kale for my breakfast smoothie. Often we have it for dinner as well, and we are still overloaded. So, I wanted to find a way to use up a lot of kale - and ... Read More about Kale Walnut Pesto
Homemade Applesauce
The Basics Series - Homemade Applesauce Applesauce is one of the first things I remember helping with when I was a kid. Both my Mom and and grandmother made it, sometimes together, and it was often the kids' job to squish the apples through the old fashioned chinois/food press with the wooden pestle. I don't know what has become of the chinois, but I still have Grandma's pestle - handy for all sorts of percussive tasks in the kitchen, though because of that, I admit it is a bit the worse for ... Read More about Homemade Applesauce