By this time of year, when the harvest season is coming to an end, my shelves are lined with colorful jars of pickles and preserves, and the freezer is stuffed with fruit from the garden and veggies from my CSA share. I’ve got chutneys, jams, dried mushrooms, sauerkraut, dilly beans, marmalades, corn relish, and much more.

One Christmas a few years ago a dear friend bought me a burlap bag and, I think, a flock of chicks from Heifer International. I didn’t have to carry six furry, cheeping little birds home in that bag – rather, I had a small card noting that these chicks had been given in my honor, to a family who could use them to establish a livelihood for themselves.

Advice on feeding picky kids with local, farm-fresh food, and two recipes for using autumn fare to make delicious food that your kids will love.

For the first time ever I got tired of basil and tomatoes, fabulous as they are. I got tired of shorts and flip flops. I wanted potato and leek soup, wild mushrooms, and roasted winter squash. I wanted an excuse to delve into my store of dried and home-canned foods, not inferior to their fresh counterparts, but different—as raisins are different from grapes.

Rather than going with the typical dinner and a movie for a first date, why not get creative and unique by going to a farmer’s market?

At this time of year, my dehydrator is humming almost non-stop, and there are bundles of aromatic herbs drying all along my hallway wall. Although I also can and freeze food for winter (part of how I keep up with my CSA share!), drying food has several advantages:

Excerpted from Cold Cereal & Toast
Jump to the Original »
A bundle of basil showed up in my CSA share this week.  I shuddered a bit thinking about that same herb growing somewhat recklessly …

From neglected (but delicious) greens to scraps that can be used to make fragrant herbal vinegars and soup stocks, there may be some food freebies in your kitchen that you haven’t yet taken full advantage of.

Red Russian Kale and Blue Potatoes is a simple recipe that combines two great vegetables at the peak of their season into one dish for an accompaniment to meat or as a vegetarian entree.

Excerpted from Cold Cereal & Toast
Jump to the Original »
Eggs are a serious subject in our household.  With a fiercely competitive egg toss at our annual family barbecue for year-long bragging rights, …