Is the exciting bounty of the season slipping into a dull pounding of obligation? Perhaps your calves and your neck are tired from days of standing at a cutting board, a dehydrator, a canning kettle. Are you are starting to give the side-eye to the zucchini and the cucumbers? What insanity possessed you to plant 8 hills…
Food Preservation
Oven-Roasted Herb Confit Tomatoes
As a gardener, going away or taking vacation in the summer is always a bit of a deal with the devil. On the one hand, a long weekend spent camping (or whatever) is awesome! On the other hand, when you come back home, you are likely to find your tomato plants have taken over your…
Homestead Kitchen Projects – A Happy Jumble of DIY
I haven’t been posting much lately. I have all kinds of things I want to share with you, but with summer in full swing I’m prioritizing kid-time and project-doing. Speaking of projects…as I was walking around my kitchen a few days ago, I had to laugh. It was such a perfect snapshot of the total…
Tomato Canning Quick Reference Guide
When I was canning up tomatoes this past weekend, and I was sick, so I kept double checking things and kinda getting hazy about what the hell I was doing. Moral of the story: do not attempt to can 100 pounds of tomatoes while sick. But as I was shuffling back and forth to my…
Food Storage For People Who Don’t Hate Food
In the preparedness world, things like this list go around periodically: This is a guide to building your food storage on $5 a week. Ignoring for a minute that food prices have clearly gone up since this list was put together (5 pounds of honey for $5? I don’t think so), my reaction every time…
You Can Make Bacon At Home. And It's Delicious.
In about a week you could be eating the best bacon of your entire life. You could be holding in your hand a glistening mahogany slab of perfectly crisped pink, tender, juicy meat streaked through with succulent fat. You could be proclaiming to the world: “Behold what I have made! It is bacon and it is sublime!” Instead…
How Not To Die From Botulism: What Home Canners Need To Know About The World's Most Deadly Toxin
You may have seen this article. A Seattle man recently contracted botulism from his improperly canned elk meat and is lucky to be alive. His description of how he canned the elk is like a checklist for everything you never, ever do when canning food. I love to see so many new people taking up home…
Whole Life Integration: Tips To Simplify Nearly Everything In Your Productive Home
A reader emailed me this past weekend and in a few sentences got right to the heart of why getting started with productive home- and garden-keeping can be so dang challenging. Hi Erica, I’ve been working on getting a garden going and redesigning my life, but the current life really gets in the way. Lots…
Three Sisters in Seattle Chili
The thing about this chili is, you pretty much just open up a bunch of jars and simmer. So on a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, 1 being “Boil Water” and 10 being “The Food They Invent at Moto” this chili is maybe a 2, and that’s only if you need to rummage around for a…
My Big Fat Hippie Pantry: A Full Larder For Fall
A friend of mine who’s known me for eight years or so was over a few days ago. She was checking out my pantry and said, “When we met, you had a total Costco pantry. And now it’s a total hippie pantry.” Excuse me while my heart swells with a little self-indulgent pride over my…
How To Make Jerky At Home with Venison or Elk
Some urban homesteading families have the inclination and skill to go beyond gleaning and gathering and put their meat on the table – literally – through hunting and fishing. Anisa Schell’s family is one, and today I am thrilled to share her recipe for Wild Game Jerky. Anisa blogs at Lazy Homesteader and gets dirt under her…
Stop Throwing Away Free Tomato Sauce
It has come to my attention that many people are unwittingly throwing away free tomato sauce when they preserve their summer tomatoes. Here’s the thing: like all fruit, the skin of tomato is where much of the natural pectin resides. Pectin is the starch that gives jams their thickness and good tomato sauce its natural,…