Lil and I made Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s rugelach for a cookie exchange last week. Lil loved rolling peach, blueberry peach, and sour cherry preserves with almonds in the rich butter and cream cheese dough. She even made her own creation, chocolate with no nuts. The recipe is time consuming and made me break up with my food processor but the results are outstanding. This is the perfect cookie for me – not at all sweet but [...]

My Great Grandma Davis, mother of my father’s mother Joyce, was an old school home cook. She grew a large garden and Grandpa fished to feed themselves fresh and cheap food. Grandma later used her kitchen experience to serve as a school cook for many years in the decades where everything was prepared from scratch on site. Because Grandma lived into her nineties, I grew up knowing her. I remember eating a breakfast of biscuits [...]

Step 1: Put out a call on Facebook that you are canning. Tell friends you will teach them. Step 2: Offer to entertain their kids with paper mache when friends respond. Step 3: Breathe deeply as chaos ensues when friends and kids come over. Step 4: Enjoy the chatting as you work together to peel and slice ~30 pounds of peaches. Step 5: Give your friends canning confidence as they help fill jars with peach [...]

Homemade jam is a perfect canvass for creativity. Fresh seasonal fruit packs plenty of flavor on its own but thanks to the high acid content, fruit jam can be safely canned with herb and spice additions. Tired of the same old peach jam I usually make, I asked the family for new ideas. Lil wanted to combine our freshly picked peaches with farmer’s market blueberries. Alex suggested playing with fresh basil from our garden. And [...]

In partnership with Wild Goose Creative, I am pleased to announce a new series of home preserving classes. Join me on third Tuesdays from 6:30 – 8:30 to preserve local fresh foods by freezing, canning, drying and curing. Each workshop will include hands on experience, tastings, recipes, and a sample to take home. Schedule 6/21: Jam Canning -  We will use a seasonal fruit to make jam and freeze berries. The basic water bath methods [...]

Our family spends countless hours harvesting and preserving foodstuffs for times when they are unavailable fresh. We preserve tomatoes, cook up jam, press cider, can applesauce, and dry herbs summer through fall. Our winter stores for 2011-2012 began Sunday, just as the winter of 2010-2011 violently passed on. Alex chopped and I hauled ash wood from generous friends who had to remove the dying tree. We went back today and will make one more trip [...]

My friend Jill (and her friend Maya) are writing Friday Five posts on their blog Itinerant Foodies. It’s a great idea for a quick post before the weekend and starting today I’m going to steal it! This week, I want to share five things that are aging in the house. Sometimes I feel like I have no space and this is why: tucked into every corner and counter are jars of foodstuffs fermenting, drying, and [...]