This has been the year of the fruit leather, and my favorite so far is this plum and crabapple fruit leather… it’s sweet and tart, with a gorgeous color, plus it is very pliable and tender (a great quality for fruit leather, as some can end up as tough as… well, leather). I’m on my third […]
{Easy} Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles Recipe
For years I’ve tried making pickles- everything from bread and butter refrigerator pickles to classic dills… and for years I’ve never found a recipe I have fallen in love with, until now. I didn’t realize how much my general lack of pickling skills was weighing on me- I mean, a homesteader should be able to […]
Maple-Sweetened Peanut Butter Balls Recipe
Peanut butter covered in chocolate is one of life’s fine pleasures. And when that peanut butter is mixed with the earthy, smokey, sweet flavor of maple sugar, it’s pretty darn incredible. These maple peanut butter chocolate candies are actually modeled after one of my old favorite holiday treats, the glorious Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg (why are […]
Smashed Sweet Potatoes with Garlic Butter
I’ve always thought sweet potatoes were only okay- I’ve never been crazy about them… even the beautiful glowing purple ones we grow in our own garden. And Karl is simply just offended by sweet potatoes, maintaining that they are indeed “not a potato.” I had to start calling them Yams, just so that he would […]
Sweet Apple Chicken Salad Recipe
Do you ever notice how certain dishes always taste better when somebody else makes them? Chicken salad was one of those things for me. That is, until I really thought about what it was that I liked about other peoples’ chicken salads, and set out to finally nail down the perfect recipe. What I came up […]
Spiced Canned Apple Slices Sweetened with Honey {Canning Recipe}
Did you ever discover something new that totally changed your world, and you can’t believe you went all this time never knowing about it? And then you feel silly because the thing you didn’t know existed and that changed your life was a jar of essentially homemade canned apple pie filling? No? Just me then… […]
Apple, Onion & Sage Pulled Pork {slow cooker recipe}
This is autumn in a crockpot. You know how I know that? Because it’s autumn… and I went right outside and harvested the sage from my herb garden. We picked the apples from our tree and the onions from our garden just a couple weeks ago! And because when I walked into the house and […]
Salted Honey Caramels
If there’s anything I’m a connoisseur of, it’s likely caramels. It’s my favorite flavor of anything and everything, anywhere. I will without a doubt always order the caramel-flavored whatever it is. A couple of years ago, I discovered that I could make caramel… and I got really good at it. I make the best salted caramel […]
How to Make Fire Cider (Recipe + How to Use)
It doesn’t happen often, but when I get the sniffles I turn into a big whiney baby. I’m useless. No pushing through and carrying on with the day here, nope. I’m in bed, on the couch, taking it easy- and almost always with a pile of used tissues on the floor… yes mom, I still […]
Homemade Maple Cream Soda
For some reason I keep picturing a group of big burly men- wearing red flannel shirts and dark denim jeans held up by suspenders, and all sporting the type of beard that birds try to nest in… returning from a day filled with chopping wood in the dense and misty old-growth forrest, they sit around […]