It doesn’t feel like Fall today, and yet today it officially begins. The temperature is suppose to climb to the 90’s this afternoon and yet I get an unexplainable itch every year at this time to stock my cupboards and prepare for old man winter. To date, my cupboards are stocked with the following: 10 quarts marinara sauce 2 quarts canned tomatoes 8 pints blackberry
Tomato Sauce = Fail
My eyes are still wet with tears and I can’t believe I am making myself write this post. I had a huge bucket of Roma tomatoes from the Urban Farm I have been planning to can into marinara sauce. I waited a week for them to ripen to the perfect level. You don’t want them overripe, but I wanted them really red. Finally, they were
Endless Squash
So much summer squash… so much zucchini… so many patty pans… Saturday was a really raining morning, the kind I actually prefer to work outside in. That meant fewer volunteers showed up, but the summer squash waits for no one – it still needed to be picked. If we decided to put it off a few more days, we would end up with baseball bat
Canning Season
Canning season has begun at my house, although I was trying to hold off until later in the month to really get into things. It dawned on me the other day though when I reached into the cupboard and found one last, lonely jar of jam that berry season would be gone if I waited too long. Since then, I have put up a couple
Harvesting January
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
Drying Herbs
As the holidays approach, this is the perfect time to replenish the spice cabinet with some dried, homegrown herbs. I cut some of the perennials way back towards the end of summer and they have been patiently hanging on our covered porch to dry for a few weeks now. Things like sage, rosemary, thyme, chives, oregano, etc go fast at our house in the winter
Last Canning
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
Canning Tomatoes
It’s been quite chilly at night here, but for the last couple weeks our windows are fogged up late at night with the smell of simmering tomatoes and herbs wafting through the house. Not an uninviting home, but I could due with an earlier bedtime during these shorter days. The winter hiberation cannot begin quite yet though for there are tomatoes to be canned. We
Pear Chutney = Sweet Piece of Heaven
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
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