Birthday Cake – Localized
Today is my darling husband’s birthday, so this morning the kids & I baked him a cake. I chose my Grandma’s Fresh Apple Cake recipe in part because I had ingredients on hand and in part because it was one I could adapt so that it used mainly local ingredients. Oh yeah, and also because [...]
Garden Primer Part 2 – How Many Vegetables Do I Need?
It took me longer than I’d hoped to get this post out. Part of my struggle was that choosing the veggies for your garden is such a personal choice. But a conversation with a friend last night helped me really focus in on how I choose veggies for my garden.
Start with the limiting factors
If you [...]
Eat From the Pantry Challenge – Week Two
My biggest lesson-learned in the Eat From the Pantry Challenge is not to send your spouse to the grocery store–even with a detailed list–if you expect to hold to eating from the pantry. Oh well, we still were able to use up quite a bit of stuff from the pantry this week, so I can’t [...]
The Eat From the Pantry Challenge
This month, Life as Mom is hosting the Eat from the Pantry Challenge. The idea is that each family spend the month of January trying to eat their way through the bounty in the pantry/freezer/cupboards to save a little money in the New Year.
I am a bulk food addict and I belong to an [...]
A few tips on making Mozzarella
I know a lot of folks who, like me, love the idea of making mozzarella from scratch. But I also know quite a few people, myself included, who have tried it and failed miserably. This weekend, I think I finally had my mozzarella breakthrough, so of course I had to share it here.
First, the recipe. [...]
Heart-healthy & Earth-friendly look the same when it comes to diet
A friend on mine recently asked me for some advice on eating a low sodium diet because she was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure. I realized as I typed up all my tips that a heart-healthy diet looks a whole lot like an Earth-friendly one. Just another reason to think about the foods we [...]
Making chicken and vegetable stock
Last week, LaLaGirl cracked me up with her story–including pictures–of a moldy carton of Swanson’s Chicken Broth, commenting that she really ought to make her own. I promised I would share my method, so here it is.
I say method instead of recipe, because, like so many of the things I cook up, you can [...]
Die, evil vermin!
Autumn at our house almost always means harvest, and food preservation typically follows. Unfortunately, along with the boxes of tomatoes, buckets of garlic, and oodles of other fruits & veggies come the fruit flies. I can tolerate a couple of flies, but when they reach critical mass, I start exclaiming things like “Die, evil vermin” [...]
In search of the perfect pancake
Pancakes were probably the first food I learned to make from scratch. In part because my sister has the best darned “Griddle Cake” recipe I’d ever tasted, and in part because I love cooked breakfast–especially when it can include peanut butter and chocolate chips– I became obsessed with pancakes.
Now that I have children of my [...]
End of season tomato primer
If there’s one thing tomato-growers in colder climates fear, it’s early frost that strikes with lots of green fruit still on the vine. According to the Purdue Cooperative Extension, optimal ripening temperature is between 68-77, and it hasn’t been getting nearly that warm here this last week, and the nighttime temperatures just keep on dropping, [...]
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