Updated 09/24/22 In my home, homemade vinegar has been the Holy Grail of scratch cooking. My daughter MK tried a few years ago and came very close, but flies invaded her apple scraps and ruined it. It sure smelled great though as I tossed it onto the compost. I have tried making vinegar a couple of […]
self reliance
DIY Lard
If this was truly DIY, I would also raise the pigs… This may sound like a contradiction, or merely a justification from a woman who really likes to eat lard, but I don’t actually eat much meat and I rarely eat pork.
The Last of the Tomatoes
Click here to go to the recipe We still have tomatoes in Northern California but not for much longer. On each of my last several trips to the Sunday farmer’s market, I’ve brought home three or four pounds of dry-farmed early girls. I’ve been roasting and freezing these small tomatoes so we’ll have some after […]
5 Reasons to Ferment Food
I find fermentation fascinating. I’m pretty much obsessed with it and wish I had discovered it earlier in my adult life (better late than never). I can’t really be too hard on myself though. In just a few generations, we’ve lost (most of) our food-growing and food-preparing skills. Fortunately slow, local, organic, real food has gained […]
My First Attempt at Homemade Hooch: Mead
Click here to go to the recipe “It looks terrifying.” That’s what my friend Amy said when I opened my jar of homemade mead and poured her a cup to try. Mead is honey wine. Aristotle speaks of it. Beowulf drank it. Shakespeare mentions it. The simple recipe likely explains mead’s persistence throughout the ages. In a nutshell, […]
How to Make Fabulous Ricotta with Two Ingredients
Click here to go straight to the recipe. You may never buy ricotta cheese again after you taste this. Dense, creamy and delicious homemade ricotta surpasses any store-bought brand I’ve ever tried, and requires only two ingredients and about twenty minutes of actual cooking time. I use high quality ingredients to make ricotta—Straus organic milk […]
5 Ways Reducing Waste Can Reduce Your Waistline
If you have tried to lose weight to no avail, you may want to cut down on your waste rather than counting your calories. 1. To quote my friends at Plastic Free Tuesday, plastic makes you fat. Many plastics contains BPA, a synthetic estrogen. According to Dr. Robert Lustig, the UCSF pediatric endocrinologist made famous by his […]
How to Make Vanilla Extract
Click here to go straight to the recipe. I now pronounce my vanilla cured. Had I started blogging sooner, I would have learned just how easy curing vanilla is. I first read about it on the blog Happiness in Jars. When I posted a couple of things on social media about my wonderful discovery, people […]
Simple 3-Ingredient Deodorant Recipe That Works
Unlike my other recipes, you don’t actually eat this one. But because I make my deodorant (mostly) out of food ingredients and several people have asked me how I do it, I thought I would go ahead and post the recipe on this food blog. This stuff works. When I first decided to attempt to live plastic-free, […]