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…

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…

This last week I finished making our family’s favorite: Sriracha. All the men in our family love this spicy condiment and chances are your’s do too. It’s on our table at almost every meal.  Last year for Christmas stocking stuffers, I bought sriracha key-chain bottles and filled it with my homemade sauce. Now they carry…

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…

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…

At the height of summer it can seem like there are more herbs coming from your garden than you could ever use in a hundred years. But you don’t want to waste a single bit of herb goodness coming out of your garden this year. So what can you do to make sure you get…

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…

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…

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…

One of the best things to come out of the garden each year is asparagus. It’s a perennial vegetable that, once established, will give you years of vegetable deliciousness with very little work. In fact, after planting your vegetable garden, I highly recommend you make establishing an asparagus bed your next priority. Small investment, big…

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…

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…

Every year I plant way too much Swiss chard. In my defense, it’s such an easy vegetable to grows and I forget how much just a couple rows will produce. Then I work all fall chopping, blanching and freezing dozens of bags of Swiss chard, only to have the family complain about it. Then I…

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…

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…

I hope you’ll try this Last year I told you about how I preserved 5 lbs of lemons in salt. This was a new experiment for me and I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. Well, I’m happy to say, it was all I hoped for. Today, one year after putting the lemons in…