Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
The first frost of the season waits for no one! I can’t use grad school as an excuse to delay the coming cold season, so I’ve been spending some early mornings and late evenings in the kitchen processing tomatoes. When I don’t have time to make a big batch of sauce, I am canning them simply on their own. Canned tomatoes in their own sauce
Fall is the season of preserving and it’s high time I start sharing what’s been simmering in my canning pot. We can’t seem to have enough jars of applesauce in our cupboard, so I’ve been cooking up batches for the past couple weeks. It’s a great snack, breakfast, and dinner side dish. Applesauce is also fairly simple and easy to can. You can use almost
We planned our meals pretty carefully during our week vacation in the high desert country. We wanted things that used produce in season and were easy to prepare. No one likes to be standing over a stove during their vacation time. The place we rented had a grill, which was kind of amazing. We never really understood why people love grilling so much. Now we
Like a crazy woman, I went back to the local farm to u-pick more strawberries. Our cupboards are stocked with jam and I am getting tired of standing over the stock pot stirring. So this round I decided to just freeze them all – easy and versatile. I lightly rinsed the berries, since they can be little sponges and soak up excess water. I then
Marmalade is similar to jam in texture, but typically they include some amount of fruit peel. In this case, I made a delicious batch of strawberry-lemon marmalade or, as my friend Behak described it, strawberry-lemonade in a jar. It tastes like I canned summer and I can’t wait to pop these suckers open in January when I’ve forgotten what the sun feels like. The original
I got hit with either a bad, bad cold or the flu and have been held up on the couch for the last two days. I have a fever and every bone in my body aches. Admittedly, I am not the best patient because I have a hard time sitting still. That said, I am trying to give in to resting. I’ve been drinking ginger
We have been having swiss chard for dinner now for about three months. It’s a versatile vegetable packedΒ with great vitamins and minerals – especially great for getting through these last weeks of winter. I thought I would share some simple ways we have been cooking it up. Nothing fancy – just simple cooking with freshly picked greens. Spicy Chard Warm a couple tablespoons of
My outdoor garden beds have been providing me with a steady supply of the usual winter suspects: kale, swiss chard, spinach, collard greens, leeks, and tasty brussel sprouts. Oregon, especially the Willamette Valley, is fortunate to have relatively mild winters and we pretty much live on brassicas from November through February. This is the first winter I have had the pleasure of gardening with a
In the glut of summer tomatoes, I put up several dozen cans of marinara sauce and whole tomatoes. When winter sets in though I tend to forget about them quietly waiting on my shelves. I just adjust to knowing tomatoes do not grow in winter, so I plan meals using seasonally available ingredients for the most part instead. Seed catalogs pouring into the mailbox are
