I grew up with my grandma and mom using bacon grease for pretty much everything except pie crust and then they used lard. My grandma had homemade butter, which as kids, we called "real butter". Mom used margarine in the tubs so real butter at my grandma's was such a treat. For seasoning beans or cooking onions or garlic, it was always bacon grease. I had always saved bacon grease and used it like ...
Jerusalem Artichoke
Yesterday Vince dug up two of the Jerusalem Artichokes (sun chokes). There's no telling how many area out there to be harvested. Maybe I'll keep track this year of how many we harvest. It's best to wait til after a hard frost or freeze before using these. We did have a 24 degree night a few weeks (maybe a month) ago but I had planned to wait til we get some cold weather to start harvesting ...
New to Me Sourdough Method
There are plenty (like everyone!) of folks who know more about sourdough bread making than I do but I've always wondered why you feed the starter, let it rise and then fall and then fall and that's when you use it. Normally, I will feed my starter the night before when I'm going to make bread the next day. I can see on the sides of the jar how far it rose and then, it fell. In my head, it ...
Green Tomato Curry Recipe (of sorts)
The green tomato curry recipe . . I watched a video of (That 1870's Homestead) and copied what she was doing, then I read a bunch of other recipes and tweaked the recipe a little. It isn't really a recipe - just my notes that may or may not make sense to any of you. This recipe makes A LOT! It's what I used for canning so I hope you can decipher my thoughts, cut the recipe down to a better size ...
Green Tomato Curry
Someone will probably remind me that I say this about everything I can but Green Tomato Curry is one of my favorite things I've canned. I will admit that my canning storage system here is not good - just not good at all. I have plenty of room but I don't have a good set up. In MO the first time, I had metal shelving units and was able to keep all my jars on those shelves. The basement had a large ...
Spilled The Oil!
Remember that I said yesterday I was going to stitch til midnight? Nope . . I made a huge mess and had to clean it up. I had onions and garlic in the freeze dryer and about 10:00 p.m., it was ready to come out. When I go in there to get food out of the freeze dryer, I take a plastic drinking glass (that we no longer use for a drinking glass) in there full of vacuum pump oil. I have an old style ...