We love having people over for a meal and games. Over the years I’ve developed a few go-to recipes so I don’t have to think about planning a menu each time. I can just pick from one of the preplanned menus. This really helps reduce the stress of entertaining. We recently added a new item …
Venison usually refers to deer meat but it can also include any wild game meat such as elk, carabao, and antelope. Canning venison is a great way to preserve the fall harvest and fill your shelves with shelf stable foods for quick meals. It will also free up freezer space and help prepare you for …
Dehydrating apples is one of the easiest and tastiest ways to preserve your harvest. Whether you like chewy rings or crisp apple chips, the process is simple and the results are perfect for snacking, baking, or tossing into oatmeal. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the step-by-step process for dehydrating apples, cover different methods …
I was having a conversation with a friend recently and I mentioned that I like to freeze muffins before I bake them. Up until a couple of years ago I always baked muffins and then froze them. It worked great but it was time consuming to keep cooked muffins stocked in the freezer. Then I …
Tomatillos are nightshade plants that love the summer heat. They’re native to Mexico but can be grown in most home gardens in North America, and are very popular in Texas and the southwest states. We’ve been growing tomatillos for several years and every year I’m amazed at how well they grow with very little care. …
Bananas are one of the best fruits to keep in your dehydrating rotation -inexpensive, available year-round, and loved by just about everyone. When I find them marked down at the store because they’re getting brown, I buy as many as I can carry. They go straight into the dehydrator. This post covers two things: banana …
One of the things I get asked quite often is, “How do you store home canned food and what do you do with all those mason jars?” I get it, most of us are used to shopping for just a week or two at a time and the thought of having to store a years …
One of my favorite things about the summer garden is the basil. We pretty much use basil for one thing….pesto. I shared photos of our first batch of pesto for this season and a couple of local friends asked me about freezing in glass jars. Then I got a comment on the post asking how …
It’s not that people are intentionally keeping tomato growing secrets, it’s just that sometimes those of us who have been gardening a while forget what it’s like to be a beginner gardener. And sometimes new gardeners don’t know what questions to ask. I’ve been reminded of this as I help my sister with her first …
While freezing cucumbers is probably not the first thing people think of when they want to preserve cucumbers, it’s actually a very useful thing to do. Here’s the thing with freezing cucumbers, the texture will be different when they’re thawed. If you can accept that fact, you can successfully freeze cucumbers. You can freeze cucumbers …
It’s dewberry season around here which means we have stained fingernails and small thorns in our hands, enter homemade black drawing salve to the rescue. We should wear gloves, I’m not sure exactly what it is about gloves that we don’t like when we pick berries but there’s something…and so we don’t wear them. We …
I’ve always believed that that of all our budget categories, the grocery budget is the easiest to save on from month to month. For the most part, there’s very little you can do about your mortgage, there’s only so much you can do to reduce energy costs, and I don’t know about you but our …
Cucumbers are one of those vegetables that people tend to love or hate. My family is mostly filled with cucumber haters but that doesn’t deter me from growing cucumbers every summer. They’re worth growing even if only a couple of us like them. Like zucchini and summer squash, cucumbers can be quite prolific which is …
Soon after my husband and I got married, he brought home a beautiful lavender flower that had a lovely smell, He had found on a pasture fence line. It was a native purple passion flower, Passiflora incarnata, which is also known as maypop in areas where it grows wild in North America. We’ve been growing …
Chicken and rice is favorite combination at our home. What’s not to love – it’s a delicious and frugal combination? When you purchase a whole chicken it’s one of the least expensive meats and rice (even our favorite, basmati rice) is cheaper per pound than pasta. One of our staple chicken and rice meal is …
Knowing how much to plant to feed your family for a year is a great help when you’re planning out your garden. What one family of 4 needs is not necessarily what another family of 4 needs, so much depends on taste preferences, your climate, and whether you’re growing vegetable for just eating fresh or …
When most people think about the food garden, they think about annuals like tomatoes, cucumbers, and broccoli. But there are many perennial vegetables, fruits, and herbs that will grow in all but the very coldest gardening zones. Every year we try to plant edible perennials in our garden. Our goals is that over time we’ll …
Having a variety of life skills helps make living your life easier. Many of these skills for life were necessary for generations past and were taught from a young age. However, in our modern societies many of these have become “lost” skills and are no longer passed down from generation to generation. However, many of …
Homemade soup is very easy to make using ingredients that you already have on hand. Soup recipes are great but they don’t have to be followed to make a great soup. Use this process to learn what makes a great soup so you can create your own family favorite, from scratch, soups and stews. Don’t …
How much is enough? And what does enough mean anyway? These are questions that often go through my mind and I wonder if they go through yours too? A few years ago I was talking with a lady from church about canning the elk her husband had brought home from a hunting trip. She later …