canning Archives - Our Homestead Adventures

Dilly Beans Recipe, Small Batch

A good green bean harvest meant we could feast on dilly beans this year. This was our first season of pretty good success with beans. At least in our eyes. Success looks different to different people. Let me explain that last year we were only able to save 11 ounces of beans… carefully packed away…

Growing Coriander in the Garden

You may be growing Coriander and not even know it. It’s what comes after your cilantro plant bolts Our coriander was truly a “learning by living” experience. We had an extended cool, spring season. Many of our herbs thought summer had gone and started “bolting” into flowers. It took about a month after the white…

Dandelion Jelly Recipe

Dandelions begin growing here just before we are about to get serious with the spring garden. They take all of the built-up cabin-fever energy and beg to be picked before the lawn mower hits the ground. There is a large space on our property where we haven’t had much success with growing anything but green…

Chestnut Jam Recipe

When life gives you chestnuts… you make chestnut jam. When you have more chestnut trees than you can easily count, and they produce an abundance of chestnuts, you find a way to use them, unless of course, you are only using them to feed the local deer and squirrels. Since we have enough nuts to…

Make as You Go, Pico de Gallo

As summer’s end brought inconsistent weather, autumn stepped in, and we began to bring in less and less tomatoes. This just about puts a damper on canning tomatoes. We had too many to have for just sandwiches, but not enough for major preserving… What can you do? Use the tomatoes for a refrigerator jar of…

Beauty in the Fade, Fall on the Homestead

Finding meaning in fall. The leaves swirled down from our persimmon tree with a wind rushing up our hill. The chickens have lost quite a few feathers, as a palette of various shades have been wind-blown lining the sides of the chicken run like a tossed feathered boa. Our majestic sunflowers with multiple heads of…

Candied Jalapeños Recipe

Call it “Candied Jalapeños”, “Jalapeño Candy” or “Cowboy Candy”, it’s just yummy! Our nephew’s family joined us for a gathering and brought a tray, a block of softened cream cheese, and a jar of sliced jalapeños in a sweet, clear syrup, and dumped it over the cream cheese. There were crackers and tortilla chips to…

Garden Fresh Tomato Soup Recipe

There’s nothing like garden fresh tomato soup. After a couple sessions of canning tomatoes from our garden, and a few rounds of B.L.T. sandwiches, we needed another way to enjoy them and boy did we find the answer with this tomato soup recipe. Our dining room table has become the place to unload our rolled…

Canning Made Easy

How to do boiling-water processing or water bath canning If you’ve never preserved fruits and vegetables by canning, this is a really easy way to get started. You just need a boiling-water canner, which is a large pot with a lid and a rack to help you manage those hot jars. You can also purchase…

Summer Squash Pickles Recipe

Summer squash is plentiful, how ’bout some pickles? We have never had much luck growing squash. It seems we’d get in 3-5 and then the leaves of the plant would start looking diseased, shrivel, and die. Year after year. We could have said, “We just can’t grow squash,” or we could just keep trying to…