The kitchen is where simple living comes to life. It’s where home cooking meets food preservation—where you turn garden harvests and pantry staples into nourishing meals for your family. In this space, you’ll find from-scratch recipes made with whole ingredients, along with trusted techniques for preserving food through canning, fermenting, dehydrating, and freezing. Whether you’re making soup from fresh vegetables, putting up jam, or planning a pantry that supports your values, these resources will help you slow down, cook with purpose, and make the most of every ingredient. Because feeding your people well doesn’t have to be complicated—it just has to be real.
Homemade cakes are easy to make and they’re all make pretty much the same way. You need some kind of flour, sweetener, fat, liquid, leavening agent, and maybe an egg or two – that’s it. Here is a list of super easy homemade cake recipes that use staples from your pantry. Some of these recipes …
Shortbread cookies are a super versatile and easy to make cookie using just a few pantry staples. These grapefruit shortbread cookies are a fun twist on the classic buttery cookie. I’ve been making the same shortbread recipe for most of my adult life (a long time) and I love it. It’s buttery and not very …
Simple syrups are a great way to add flavor to drinks, yogurt, pancakes, ice cream, or as a grenadine substitute, really anything that needs a little something. My current favorite simple syrup is hibiscus syrup, made with the calyx of hibiscus sabdariffa, also known as Roselle and Jamaican sorrel. To make hibiscus syrup you just …
I think most people instinctively know how to plan meals, but we’ve got so many apps and systems available to us that we assume it can’t really be as easy as writing down what meals we want to eat for the week or month and then making sure we have the food to cook those …
I’ve become quite obsessed with trying recipes for hibiscus tea, hibiscus curd, hibiscus jelly, and many more hibiscus treats since our hibiscus bushes are bursting with calyx (pods). We’ve grown edible hibiscus for several years and I’m truly amazed by the many traditional hibiscus recipes there and by people’s unique twists to those recipes. Are …
Tired of overly sweet fruit pies? Then try this sweet and tangy mango lime pie! I discovered mango pie when I over bought mangoes and had several mangoes getting very ripe on my kitchen counter. I love it when I make delicious mistakes like that. Everyone in my family loves mangoes…except me. So when I …
Every year our family picks wild mustang grapes to make grape jelly and grape juice. Mustang grapes are similar to muscadine grapes but more sour, however, they make a lovely sweet/tart jelly and juice. Every year we have quite a bit of leftover mash or waste from extracting the juice, this year I decided to …
I’ve recently learned that not everyone loves okra as much as I do. There are people in my family that love it and there are those who tolerate it. I try to work within the likes and dislikes of my family so we prepare it in a variety of ways. Of course, we fry it, …
Every winter we have an abundance of citrus. It’s so wonderful, but it can be overwhelming at times. At the beginning of citrus season we’re excited and eating tons of it. But towards then end of the season you’ll find me juicing and freezing citrus juice almost daily as we make sure to not waste …
I love my freezer. I know that sounds a bit odd but I don’t know how I would consistently feed my family from scratch, healthy meals without a freezer. I use the freezer to preserve fruits and vegetables, store bulk foods, and store make ahead meals for those times when I don’t have time to …
Lemons (and other citrus) are so very wonderful, they’re bright and cheery and are in season in the middle of winter when not much fruit is available. It’s such a treat, especially if you try to eat seasonally. My favorite citrus is the Meyer lemon and fortunately we can grow them. We preserve most of …
There’s a cycle that happens every year in our neck of the woods. Every November through January we have more citrus than we know what to do with. Everyone is “sharing” and hoping someone will take some oranges, grapefruit, and Meyer lemons off their hands before they go bad. Then every summer everyone is wishing …
I had never heard of Meyer lemons until we moved to this area. It seems every street has at least one Meyer lemon tree growing in someone’s yard. It’s a really great thing! Meyer lemons are larger than regular lemons, have thinner skin, a sweeter flavor, and more juice than regular lemons. This makes them …
I have a confession to make, until recently I’ve always been too intimidated to cook a ham. I like ham but there seemed to be a secret to keeping the ham moist and no one was telling me the secret. Well, I’ve found the secret and I’m sharing it with you….slow cooking….yep, that’s it. For …
Tin foil dinners go by a lot of names depending on who you ask. Some people call them hobo dinners, some call them foil packet dinners, and some call them campfire packets. At our house we call them silver turtles – that’s what my husband and boys call them in Scouts and it stuck. Whatever …
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 …
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 …