Summer/Fall Garden

With all the busy craziness happening here, my poor garden (and yard) has been shamefully neglected.  Our hydroponics experiment had many successes and a few failures.  Earlier this year we reevaluated my garden and decided to redo a few things.  This worked great when we decided to start the chicken nugget adventure…our redesign didn’t take much to adjust for the chickens.  Unfortunately, redesigning also delayed my garden this year.  Not ideal, but life happens and we move on.  🙂

Beans, Beans and More Beans

My family likes to eat things like chili, refried beans and baked beans.  But dry beans are not my favorite things to cook with.  I never seem to be able to get them cooked right no matter how long I cook them.  They never get soft enough no matter how long I cook them.  So it’s always been easier to just buy the canned stuff.

Adventures in Pickling

Over the weekend GadgetMan and I had the opportunity to participate in a Preparedness Workshop.  We were asked to teach a class on pickling.  Okay…I can not say why this happened

Orange Trial and Error (Big Time)

Want to see my wonderful canning bungle?

Lemons

With the pile of lemons we got last month, I got about 3 cups of Lemon Zest, about 3 cups of Citrus Candy, 9 quarts of Lemon Bug Repellent, about 3 gallons of Lemon Juice which I then used about 2 gallons of that for several pints of Lemonade. The recipes follow.

A New Toy!

Look what Gadgetman and I got for Christmas!

A Presto 23-Quart Pressure Canner But I have to admit that I’m a little nervous about using it. The thought of canning under high pressure and exploding things is a little nerve wracking. But I’m determined to learn and increase our abilities to preserve our garden harvests. Between freezing, drying, water bath canning and now pressure canning, I think we can safely preserve most of our “increase”.

Now I just need to find a few good recipes!

Pomegranate Harvest — Removing the Seeds

The red juicy seeds are the edible part of the pomegranate fruit. And anyone who has spent a warm summer/fall afternoon digging them out with minimal mess, knows this can be a tall task. But those delicious tidbits are sooooo worth it. They’re good for snacking, as toppings for salads and ice cream, and make very yummy juice and syrup.