What’s at Market in May?
Farmers Market in May sees the first heads of lettuce. Those fresh salads continue to taste so good after the many months of going without. Baby greens are still tender…
My Spring Project
I have a huge maple tree in my front yard. It's not a sugar maple. At least I don't think it is. But I'm going to tap it anyways and…
Foraging for Food
The other day I wanted to make a craft involving acorn tops which has evolved into a whole project, you gotta love life for that, why don’t I home-school again? Anyway first I had to find an ‘acorn’ tree which the kids learned is actually an Oak tree and several of them grow near the hospital where we live. We spotted them on the way to school the other day they are the only trees left with leaves on them, which is why I noticed.
Salmon Jerky
Wow.
That’s all I should have to post. We used the recipe from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook and one of the salmon I was gifted last year. Every time I prepare one of those fish I am compelled toward gratitude and appreciation for this beautiful animal that gave it’s life to feed me. They are gorgeous fish, I can’t believe we are still eating them. (more…)
Homemade Beef Jerky
My daughter has turned into a bit of a meat eater and so I have been forced to learn how to cook for her. Since I’m not about to start making roasts and this doesn’t seem to be her favorite thing either we thought jerky might be a good idea. As with any good kitchen project I turned to my cookbooks like The Joy of Cooking and Nourishing Traditions. Neither of which said much that was helpful. Fortunately we live in the age of the internet and it didn’t take more than a Google search to come up with a recipe. A quick note to one of our foodie friends and I was off to the races with my jerky recommendations. (more…)
Home Grown Ginger
I’ve heard that you can grow ginger in your house. Since I really like ginger and I know no one who grows it I think that perhaps the thing I’d like to try growing is some ginger. I found this really great information from a google search today:
Photo credit Moms In a Blog
Perfect Roast Chicken
Tis the season to be butchered…la la…wait sorry.
It’s slaughtering season which means fresh meat. Yum. For someone who was a vegetarian for most of their life I sure do love fresh meat and there is nothing quite like a roasted chicken, except maybe a roasted duck….anyway…
It’s easy. Even I can do it. (more…)
Happy Healthy Guts :)
This month I had the pleasure of sharing my home with a good friend and her daughter. The addition worked wonderfully and freed both of us single mothers up enough that we got to try a few new things.
She encountered some misfortune and picked up a guardia infection at a singing workshop over the summer. After a fairly unpleasant illness and a round of some serious antibiotics she was inspired by my shiny new Nourishing Traditions cookbook to try some fermented foods. Once we got started we never looked back! (more…)
2011 Harvest
Well mini-harvest. We didn’t really grow a lot this year being that most of the spring was spent shoveling compost and rocks. But the yard is largely done and looks great (minus the giant pile of rocks left over).
What I did plant was a bed of potatoes which did extremely well. I didn’t weigh the few early potatoes I pulled up but the fall harvest was 40lbs! Out of one bed. That is darn near our annual needs at this point this makes me very happy. (more…)
Drying Greens
Remember all those greens I helped dry last year? I never tasted any of them. I never even heard how it went other than, oh yeah it was awesome. So, note to self, don’t work with that person again if you’d like to actually learn something.
Fast forward to this year and I have been eating lettuce for the past two months like it was going out of season. Because it is. The one thing I noticed last year was a significant lack of green things in our winter storage. So this year I intended to change that and have been dehydrating and blanching up a storm. Sort of, not really. (more…)
Testing and Tasting
It seems to me that if you are going to all the trouble of canning food on the premise of being self sufficient, preserving the local harvest and such that buying pectin for your jams is a little bit counter productive. I mean it’s not like your great grandmother bought her pectin from the grocery store. She made it from scratch and she likely didn’t even have to leave the larder. (more…)
Forgotten Traditions
I am now the proud owner of one of the most valuable cookbooks known to the foodie crowd. Nourishing Traditions is a book that defies convention and steps way outside…