November sales There are lots of great sales in November. I hope you are taking advantage of them. There’s turkey (of course), spices, flour, sugar, evaporated milk. And…celery. Well, I’m going to get eight bunches of celery. Because this is the perfect time to make celery powder. And nothing could be easier. Just rinse the…

This is the time to sprout This time of year, winter colds and bugs may be starting to get to your family. Your bodies need an extra boost of nutrition and fresh vegetable goodness. All that food we preserved from last year’s garden is dwindling and it will be a couple more months before we will…

Remember back in November when turkeys were on sale for a ridiculously low price? You bought a a couple extras, didn’t you? A 28-lb turkey will yield about 7 qt jars of meat plus 7 pts of broth. That’s a lot of ready-to-heat meals from one turkey. But what if you didn’t buy any extra…

Have you ever had one of those weeks? The week where everything seems to go wrong and you find your finances, time and patience put to the test? Maybe you’re having a busy week shuttling kids to activities two or three times a day, lots of home and garden chores plus a rush of other…

Just in time for Easter Just for you and just in time for Easter: A free guide to coloring Easter eggs using natural ingredients. Between now and April 30th, you can download  my guide Natural Dyes for Easter Eggs for free! Happy Easter! Some of the many colors you can get using natural dyes. Dyeing…

In the dead of winter, when everything is frozen and bleak, Mother Nature blesses us with a ray of warm sunshine: Citrus fruit. This is the season that citrus fruit is harvested and so there’s plenty. It’s abundance means it’s on sale a lot. And a good thing too–this is when we are most prone…

Cultured dairy is a great way to get calcium into your diet as well as introduce health-promoting probiotics.  When we talk about cultured dairy everyone thinks of yogurt. Unfortunately, many of the flavored yogurts in the store no longer contain live cultures. So you might be getting the taste of yogurt but you’re not getting…

The first of this month my second son turned 20 (can you believe that!?) and for his birthday dinner I made (among other things) fried squash blossoms. What?!? You haven’t tried this yet? What are you waiting for? Here’s the recipe. These are really so very, very tasty and a wonderful way to use the zillions…

We live in a disposable society. Just about everything that comes into our house is easily (and readily) replaced with something better, newer, cheaper or brighter. But our grandparents (who lived through some hard times) were just the opposite–they found a use and reuse for just about everything that came into the house. They were…

There’s no such thing as too much basil All  my friends and Dear Readers have heard me say it: there’s no such thing as too much basil. Basil is my favorite herb, even ahead of parsley, which is surprising, isn’t it? Because parsley is in just about every recipe there ever was. First, basil is…

A creative Wonderbox My sister, Cynthihah, had some red fabric that came to her free. So she used it to make a Wonderbox. But she thought this red was just a little too…RED. So, since she lives in Washington, she did the only logical thing: she turned it into an apple! How creative is that?…

Let’s make canning less of a chore Canning can be a pretty overwhelming task, especially if you want to put up enough food to last your family all year. But if you have the right tools for the job, you can make the job a lot easier, saving your hours of work and headache. Let’s…

As you first start using whole wheat flour, you will find that it doesn’t quite “behave” like the flour you buy in the store. You may find the bread doesn’t rise as much as your white bread and you are left with a denser, heavier loaf of bread. What’s the problem and what can you…

No garden should be without kale and collards. These easy-to-grow green leafy vegetables are both  from the Brassica family (which includes cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussel sprouts and broccoli.) What makes these so great? Well, first of, they are packed with nutrition. Studies show that they may prevent several kinds of cancer. And they taste good! These are…

Here are a handful of kitchen gadgets that I like so much and find so indispensable that I can’t imagine not having them in my kitchen. Some may even be new to you.  Butter Bell First in my list of non-electric gadgets is the Butter Bell. I love my Butter Bell so much, I often…

Sprouting beans turns the dry bean into a fresh vegetable with more vitamins and a brighter flavor. It’s the perfect thing for late winter, when you are running out of fresh vegetable from the garden or any time you want an extra punch of nutrition in your menu. Added bonus: if you typically have trouble…