If you’re a home canner, you know the feeling. The garden is overflowing, your countertops are piled high with beautiful produce, and you go to the store only to find the canning aisle completely wiped out. The struggle to find jars and—especially—lids is real, and it can be incredibly frustrating. During past shortages, we all had to get creative, freezing more produce and exploring alternatives. That experience taught me a lot about the importance of […]
This week I was able to get 20 pounds each of Elephant Heart Plums and Freestone Peaches. This has made for a busy weekend of processing and canning. We processed and froze the peaches for future use. Then we processed the plums for plum jam. We have discovered that plums have a lot of natural pectic so we decided not to add any and to add very little sugar and cook it down until it […]
When you have a garden that gifts you with a mountain of cucumbers, you learn to get creative! While we love our classic fermented dill pickles, this year we decided to dive into the world of sweet and tangy bread and butter pickles. We started with a fantastic base recipe from Chef John at FoodWishes.com and, after a few tweaks to get the sweetness just right for our taste, we landed on this incredible recipe. […]
This week we had the opportunity to get asparagus from the group that is driving to eastern Washington to get excess produce that would otherwise go to waste. We decided to pickle it to preserve it. We found an awesome recipe in WECK Small-Batch Preserving, see recipe below.
We are still working our way through the 50 pound bag of onions that I got. Seemed like an awesome deal until you have to do something with all of them. We are about halfway through the bag with a lot of work left to do. Today’s endeavor was pickled onions that I canned for long term storage. I am not really confident in my canning efforts yet as I haven’t done a lot of […]
With the shorter, colder days ahead, here’s some Ciabatta bread we made today! I was intrigued and challenged with the article by William Rubel in the most recent edition of Mother Earth News (December 2019/January 2020). I had always wanted to try making Ciabatta but was always a little intimidated by the end product. After all it looked like something that must be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. I was pleasantly surprised, the recipe […]
For anyone who grew up canning and preserving, the classic metal-lidded Mason jar is an iconic sight. For years, it was the only system I knew. But after discovering German-made Weck jars, I’ve found a superior alternative that aligns perfectly with our homesteading values of durability and reusability. While they have a higher upfront cost, Weck jars have proven to be an incredible investment. If you’ve ever been curious about them, here’s a breakdown of […]
Made Dandelion Jelly after seeing a recipe for it in Can It & Ferment It by Stephanie Thurow. Not going to say it was easy to open up all of the blossoms it took to make a cup of petals but it turned out really well and it tastes like honey. Interesting experiment. #jelly #dandelion #gardening #weck jars
