Simple Living With Nature
Cooking and preserving traditional food from scratch is one of my passions, and it’s even better if it includes homegrown, foraged, or fermented ingredients. I prefer to use whole foods and many of my recipes use herbs, flowers, and other fresh from the garden ingredients. Sourdough is another passion, and I also have a thing for cooking in cast iron pans!
Hot summer days mean one thing to me: blackberries are ripening! It’s usually sometime in August that we start foraging for blackberries, and I always make sure to reserve some for making a gallon (or two or three) of blackberry mead. Of course blackberry cobbler and crisp will also be made, and they are delicious,…
Some summers are zucchini summers, and we are in the midst of one right now! While last year most of our summer squash plants got eaten by squash bugs, this year we have so many zucchini that we don’t know what to do with all of them. We’ve given them away, fed them to the…
I love herbal medicine, and when I first got really into it I was surprised and pleased to learn that so many common herbs and spices are medicinal. Many herbs and spices that most of us already have in our spice racks do double duty as powerful healers. I’m going to go over five of…
I love cooking with foraged ingredients, but I especially love it when I can do something fun with wildflowers (wildflower mead, anyone?) While the season for fresh wildflowers is generally pretty short, they are easy to dry on a drying screen and store for use throughout the year. Dried edible flowers are perfect for using…
Fermenting foods is one of my favorite pastimes, and I’ve been especially fond of naturally fermented sodas recently. This fermented turmeric soda I made recently really got me hooked! They are so easy to make and can be flavored any way you like, plus they are actually good for you. I had heard of sweet…
Many people know about stinging nettles, but they are much more well known for their painful sting than their edible and medicinal qualities. If prepared the right way, stinging nettles are delicious and nutritious! So many edible wild “weeds” are brushed off as being a nuisance, when they are actually quite tasty, and often have…
Rhubarb is an interesting vegetable that is most commonly eaten as a fruit. It is tart and delicious with an old time flavor that grows on you over time. I love it, and was very excited to discover a rhubarb plant growing in our backyard when we moved into this house last year. Rhubarb is…
Asparagus is one of my very favorite spring vegetables. I love when I start seeing them at the farmers market, as that’s a sure sign that warm weather is near! Plus it’s just a tasty vegetable that can make any meal feel fancy. Making fermented asparagus with garlic is one of the best ways to…
Please welcome guest poster, Devon Young, herbalist and blogger at Nitty Gitty Life. Devon recently completed a degree in Complementary and Alternative Medicine with the American College of Healthcare Sciences. When not writing, practicing herbal medicine, or tending to her farm and family, Devon enjoys foraging for wild edibles and medicinals. Enjoy her recipe for…
I have an exciting foraged food recipe to share with you today! I’ve wanted to make dandelion pesto for a long time, but have recently been inspired by a brand new book by Rosalee de la Forêt, Alchemy of Herbs. This book is full of amazing herbal recipes, I really want to try them all!…
