Preserving Food

Small Harvest Preserving - Dehydrating Green Peppers

Published on Friday, 12 October 2012 00:00
Written by Christine

It is amazing how many seeds you can get from one non-gmo green pepper. I have been able to plant peppers for the last 5 years without buying a seed thanks to the seeds I started keeping 5 years ago and have kept every year since then.

I have found that green peppers take very little to grow. I give my peppers absolutely no special attentions and when blessed with only an occassional rain they grow pretty abundantly. Abundantly is the key word here. Between my peppers and the peppers my friend gives me every year I have plenty of peppers to dehydrate and use throughout the year. The abundance also allows for me to share with all my friends and family that would like dehydrated peppers.

Isn't the thought of a nice stir fry in the middle of the winter with your home grown peppers just a wonderful thought?

Luckily dehydrating green peppers is one of the easiest thing you will probably ever do.

Water Canning Drunken Pears

Published on Thursday, 09 August 2012 02:36
Written by Christine

Drunken Pears - A kicked up version of Spirited Pears

This is the first year that our dwarf pear trees have produced really well. We had a beautiful harvest of pears that I happily preserved for eating later in the year when fruit is scarce on the homestead.

Small Harvest Preserving - Canning Tomatoes and Zucchini

Published on Saturday, 30 June 2012 03:31
Written by Christine

I was blessed this year with an abundance of zucchini. I had already been pickling it, dehydrating it and pressure canned some too. I just happen to also have an abundance of tomatoes at this time also. It was while my granddaughter was here visiting that had some tomatoes that needed to be preserved before we went on a grandma/granddaughter trip the next day. I remembered that my grandmother used to can tomatoes with zucchini when I was visiting her as a child. That was the ticket ! I would can them together and get the counter cleaned off of zucchini and tomatoes before our little trip. I am looking forward to using these this winter to make all kinds of wonderful soups and sauces.

Pressure Canned Tomatoes and Zucchini - makes 7 quarts

Small Harvest Preserving - Dehydrating Spiced Up Zucchini Chips

Published on Monday, 21 May 2012 23:03
Written by Christine

It's that time of year again. The time of year that you have 20 to 30 squash of various variaties sitting on your counter just waiting to be used. So you sautee' it, you fry it, you boil it. And then you look and there are 20 more from today's harvest. That's why dehydrating is so important this time of year. Zucchini is one of those spring and summer bounties that just don't can well because they get so mushy so we dehydrate it. Sure you can just slice it and dehydrate it with no special treatment and it tastes just fine and it great for snacking and for throwing into pasta sauces and much more. But what if.......

Killer Food Stores - Literally

Published on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 23:36
Written by Christine

Something happened to me the other day that made me think that I should really share some information just in case there are a few people out there that do not know about the dangers of improperly canned foods. At this time I am talking about home canned foods but it can also happen with store-bought can food.

Backyard Homesteading

Homesteading Tips for the Acreage Challenged!