Make it From Scratch – Home-Canned Bloody Mary Mix
When the garden’s bountiful tomato crop dove-tailed with one of our traditional Friday Afternoon Club gatherings, I decided to get creative in the kitchen. I skimmed through several recipes until I found one that met my requirements for a good bloody mary, including: Horseradish & hot sauce – if it ain’t spicy, I don’t want [...]
One of the Fifty Million…
This weekend, I attended a talk by Kip Nash, a Boulder man who has turned many of the front yards in his neighborhood into farm plots as part of the Boulder Community Roots project. If the endless gorgeous seed catalogs, warm weather, and the kohlrabi, sorrel, kale, garlic, onions, garlic chives, and strawberries sprouting in [...]
Update on our local-eating adventure
In mid-September, our family began what has turned out to be a fun and educational adventure in local eating. After months of canning, drying, and freezing every fruit and vegetable we could get our hands on, after many talks with other local folks committed to eating Colorado-grown food, after many, many trips to the Farmer’s [...]
Make it from Scratch – Ranch Dressing!
Since our year of local began, I have been sweating it out as our bottle of Safeway Organic Buttermilk Ranch dressing got emptier and emptier. On Wednesday night, we finished it and I knew I had a dilemma on my hands: add Ranch to our list of exemptions or figure out a good recipe. It [...]
Food Preservation 101: Part 3 – Dehydrating
Like canning jars, food dehydrators seem to be regulars at the local thrift shop. I got mine, brand-new with receipts still attached, for a whopping $1.75 at the local thrift store a few years back thanks to a neighbor who volunteers there and snapped it up for me. It’s not fancy and it doesn’t have [...]
Study confirms what we already know: Local is better!
Researchers at Cornell University released a study that confirms what we already knew: eating local is better for the planet and better for our health. The study found that the United States food production industry uses almost as much fossil fuels as our entire fleet of automobiles. This seems impossible until you consider that it [...]
Make Your Own Cure for the Winter Blues!
This past winter, I tried hard to limit our grocery store fruit purchases to US fruit. That meant a lot of citrus from Texas and a lot of apples from Washington, which overall, was fine with us. Then, it happened. An insidious interloper appeared on the grocery store shelves. Something so seemingly-wonderful, and yet so [...]
Food Preservation 101: Part 2 – Making Jam!
There is nothing sweeter than home-made jam. And that’s not because it has more sugar. It’s because the fruit is fresher, the jam is less processed, and, well, because making it yourself always makes it taste better! If you are new to canning, please review Part 1 in this series, Home Canning for all the [...]
Food Preservation 101: Part 1 – Home Canning
A couple of folks have asked me for a quick how-to on making jam. I realized I couldn’t jump straight into recipes & tips until I covered some basics on canning itself. What is home canning and how does it work? What do you need to get started? Do you really need to take a [...]
Preparing for our year of local
How can it possibly be August already? That leaves us less than 30 days to go to prepare for our year of eating locally. Granted, September is still harvest season here in Colorado, so it’s not like I have to have everything put by before the end of August, but still, the pressure is on! [...]
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