Canning & Preserving

Homemade Tomato Paste

Why make homemade tomato paste when it’s always available at the grocery store? I use tomato paste all the time. Sometimes I need up to half a cup, and sometimes just a little bit. When I make my own, I can store it in the sizes I tend to need most,

Canning & Preserving, Local Harvest

Chives: an edible flower

One of the easiest things to grow in any herb garden: a bunch of chives. Be careful, though, because they like to spread. I regularly whack them back to nubs, and they grow again every time. Not sure whether you have chives?

Canning & Preserving, Food

Easy Applesauce

Now that cool weather has arrived, it’s time to work on apples. Local orchards have bushels of fruit begging for my attention. I put up applesauce every year: it stores well, can be used in lots of ways, and is surprisingly easy.

Canning & Preserving, Food

Oven-Roasted Tomato Paste

I use tomato paste all the time. Sometimes I need up to half a cup, sometimes just a little bit. When I make my own, I can store it in the sizes I tend to need most, so I have no more partly used cans in the fridge.

Canning & Preserving, Local Harvest

Jam: Peach Melba

It was Auguste Escoffier who devised the now-famous dessert, Pêche Melba, in the early 1900s. It consisted of fresh peeled peaches, slightly sugared, with raspberry purée, served over vanilla ice cream in a swan carved of ice. The dish has become a classic,

Canning & Preserving, Food, Local Harvest

So much jam!

Okay, as you readers may already have noticed, I make a lot of jam. The season for fruit here in Michigan is just too darned short, and I want to preserve as much as I can of the local harvest.

Canning & Preserving, Food, Local Harvest

Peaches, Peaches Everywhere!

I prefer to eat local food, sourced as close to the farm as possible: I get fresher food, I help support the nearby farming community, and it tastes amazing. Sometimes, though, I make exceptions. Let me tell you about my experience with peaches.

Canning & Preserving, Food

How to Make Jam

I get asked this a lot: is making jam hard? People tend to assume it takes a lot of time; that every batch is unmanageably huge; that it’s scary and uses weird equipment. All this is so, so wrong. You can make jam in a skillet or saucepan in less than an hour.

Canning & Preserving, Food, Local Harvest

Canning & Preserving

Homemade Tomato Paste

Chives: an edible flower

Easy Applesauce

Oven-Roasted Tomato Paste

Jam: Peach Melba

So much jam!

Peaches, Peaches Everywhere!

How to Make Jam

Chives In My Garden

Chocolate Pear Butter

Slow Cooker Tomato Paste

Cherry Jam Three Ways

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