In many instances, saving seeds is pretty easy. Cut open a butternut squash, scoop out the seeds, put a few on a paper towel to dry, and there you go. With some veggies, like zucchini and cucumbers, you need to let a few get pretty big – bigger than you’d want to eat, so that…
Ferment
Fermenting is a traditional way of preserving foods that creates a delicious and gut healthy end product. Making lacto-fermented veggies is a great way to use up excess veggies from your garden. I’m also big on making fermented drinks such as kombucha, water kefir, and natural sodas. And of course there’s mead (honey wine) and other homebrews that bring us happiness and joy!
Fermented Pepperoncini Hot Sauce
For some reason this year, most of our pepper plants didn’t do very well. We only got one or two bell peppers total, and a few hot peppers here and there. Then we have this one pepperoncini plant which has produced so many peppers that I don’t even know what to do with all of…
Fermented Cherry Tomato Bombs
We have so many cherry tomatoes in the garden this year, it’s ridiculous. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as they are super sweet and delicious, but it’s becoming hard for us to consume them all! What makes it even more difficult is that cherry tomatoes aren’t usually preserved in the same manner as larger…
How to Make Hard Cider With Wild Yeast
We recently had a whole lot of fresh pressed apple cider on our hands after building a simple DIY apple press and pressing a bunch of apples from our tree. While the juice is incredibly tasty as is, we couldn’t drink it fast enough, and some of it even started to ferment in the fridge!…
Mugwort Lemon Beer Recipe
You may remember several weeks ago that I made a starter from wild yeast. Once it was bubbling along nicely, I wanted to use it in something (of course). Since I got the wild yeast recipe from Pascal Baudar’s book The New Wildcrafted Cuisine, I decided to try one of his foraged brew recipes using…
Fermented Cucumber Pickles
How have I been blogging this long and not written a post on one of the easiest and most popular vegetable ferments? I absolutely love fermented cucumber pickles, they were probably what originally got me into fermenting to begin with. I’ve been a pickle lover ever since I was a kid, and love all varieties,…
Elderflower Sparkling Mead
Ahh, early summer is upon us. This means wildflowers are in full force in most of the country. One of my very favorite flowers to work with is elderflowers, which will soon turn into beloved elderberries. Later in the season, I love turning elderberries into elderberry mead and into a medicinal elderberry syrup. The flowers…
Dandelion and Fennel Kombucha
Hello there! This is a post I recently wrote for the Herbal Academy, and thought you all would like it, too! This dandelion and fennel kombucha turned out so tasty, I definitely recommend giving it a try. The link at the bottom of this post will take you to the recipe. Also, be sure to…
How to Make a Wild Yeast Starter
With all the mead and hard cider brewing that I’ve done, up until now I’ve never tried cultivating my own yeast. With the effort that’s involved and the cost of high quality honey, I never wanted to risk tainting my brew with who knows what kind of random yeast that might be floating by. It…
Homemade Reuben Sandwich (100% Home Fermented)
Yes, I did it! I made a completely homemade Reuben sandwich, where every single ingredient was made from scratch and home fermented. I have to admit it was a bit difficult to do, mainly because of the logistics involved in making sure that every ingredient was ready at the right time. But, in the end…
