Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
Everything outside is either dead or sleeping (well, except the chickens of course), but we are nowhere near empty here on our little urban homestead. The last year of canning, drying, freezing and cold storage has left us with tons of options still for eating local, organic produce. I wanted to share just a couple of the super-simple things we’ve been eating this week. First
Nothing ruins fabulous cheese like a bad cracker or toast. The cracker flavor can overpower and distract from the cheese or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, contribute nothing to the flavor sensation you were hoping to achieve with a expensive wedge of artisan cheese. Recently I attended a dinner party where I tasted the most amazing cracker, called Raincoast Crisps. They were filled
Some friends held their annual German Beer Party last weekend, so to get in the spirit I made some German cookies. I tend to like things a little less sweet than the next guy, so these little Zimtsterne cookies were perfect. They are almost a cross between a cracker and a cookie. The dough was so good that I think I ate the equivalent of
Our poor, decrepit car finally went to the big junkyard in the sky, but that didn’t stop me from picking more tomatoes at a local farm this weekend. I was quite determined to make one huge batch of tomato sauce before the end of the canning season. I hopped on my scooter and made it happen. With Halloween just around the corner, the local farms
The only chutney I have ever really used has been store bought. I thought it was okay, but nothing to write home about. Well, my friends, that is true no more for I have discovered the sweet piece of heaven that is homemade chutney. This basic pear chutney recipe came from the Ball cookbook, but I made some variations along the way. It probably took
There has been successful canning at my house! About a week ago I mentioned the pear butter I had attempted to make with the asian pears from my mom’s house. Sadly, I had made pear sauce (like apple sauce) because the cookbook I was using didn’t specify times. And who knew you need to simmer the pear sauce for multiple hours to get pear butter?
Tonight I discovered my new favorite zucchini recipe, and it couldn’t have come at a better time! We were away all weekend and came home this afternoon after a 4+ hour drive, starving and ready to eat something healthy. I poked around the yard and found enough produce to fill my largest ceramic platter. The piled high platter included lots of yellow crookneck squash and
I got really excited earlier this week when I was flipping through my Stocking Up book on the bus into work. In this book, they reprint an excerpt from Euell Gibbons in which he describes a method of making a large dill crock. Essentially, a dill crock is one giant container of mixed crunchy vegetables that sits in a brine for about 2-3 weeks, allowing
If you use Twitter and have been following my recent “tweets” you will notice a few late night pesto batches being made. We all know that the more basil you pick, the more basil your plants produce and the less likely they are to flower and go to seed. About every other week, or every week this time of year, I have been clipping off
