When I saw the Christmas pole lima bean in Baker Creek’s catalog, it reminded me of the beautiful, marbled limas my amazing grandma grew. Since our oldest loves lima beans, it was definitely worth a try. Next, we needed a pole bean trellis.
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healthy real food
How We Buy and Organize Seeds
We have reduced the varieties of vegetables we’re growing by about 40. But we still have 60-70 varieties we’re growing this year. I’ll share with you today how we buy and organize our seeds.
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Sweet Potato Harvest
You might say sweet potatoes are glorious! And that would be fitting for this relative of the morning glory. They are another way God provides a delicious, nutritious vegetable that can be stored fresh for months. Let’s see how we did with our sweet potato harvest.
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Parsnip Harvest
Parsnips are a less common vegetable, not taking up much, if any, space in the grocery store produce departments. But their virtues make them well worth a place in the garden. Our parsnip harvest was small, but we were delighted nonetheless for what came from their small spot in our garden.
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Cream of Tomato Soup
We love soup at our house. Not only is it a wonderful seasonal dish for fall, but it can be a delicious, nutritious and quick meal when fall and winter days are busy. By using tomato sauce and grated onion, we don’t need to use the blender. As a result, this cream of tomato soup is almost as easy as the congealed stuff from a can, but so much more delicious.
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Hungarian Goulash
Hungarian goulash, the real deal. In the Midwest, there is a dish called goulash that is slightly sweetened stewed tomatoes and ground beef mixed into elbow macaroni. Not to knock that dish, but it’s not Hungarian goulash.
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Fire Tonic from The Herbal Handbook for Homesteaders
The weather is finally starting to feel like fall. I love that we can open the windows and freshen up the air in the house. But, I know it won’t be long before it gets too cold for that. The Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a cold and snowy winter for us. Truly, I love that, as well! But being closed up in the house or work or school more means germs will be more readily shared. Today, we are going to make Fire Tonic from The Herbal Handbook for Homesteaders by Abby Artemesia. It takes several weeks of sitting in the pantry to be fully ready, so now’s the time to prepare our herbal medicine cabinet and get our immunity boosted.
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Peach Corn Salsa
Peach season might be over where you are, but you still have plenty of time to make some delicious peachy recipes with the peaches you froze earlier in the season. This last episode in our peachy series of What’s in the Mason Jar gives us a sweet change to the usual. Peach corn salsa combines a few of summer’s special garden treats to make a sweet and spicy choice for chips or fish tacos, so great any time of the year.
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Potato Harvest, Our First Year Growing Potatoes
This is our first year growing potatoes. Besides sweet potatoes, which aren’t ready yet, we grew three varieties of white potatoes. Red Cloud and Dark Red Norland are red-skinned varieties and Carola is a yellow potato (check out our August newsletter). We tried to get a russet variety, but the farm we ordered from didn’t have a good supply. Which is just fine with us, since red and yellow (and purple) are our favorite varieties anyhow. Let’s see how we did with our potato harvest.
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Freezing Corn
Today, we’re going to be preserving another summertime favorite by freezing corn. Freezing vegetables does have an extra step compared to freezing fruit, but it’s still pretty easy.
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