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August Cook the Books: Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones- Basil Ice Cream
Finally, it’s August! Time for August’s “Cook the Books” pick, Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones: 90 Recipes for Making Your Own Ice Cream and Frozen Treats from Bi-Rite Creamery! In case you are just tuning in, Cook the Books is a year-long cookbook challenge, hosted by Meg of Grow and Resist and Briggsy of the blog Oh, Briggsy. Meg and Briggsy have chosen a cookbook a month to cook from and participants in the challenge are featured in a round-up at the end of each month. One of the great things about “Cook the Books” is that it is set-up to where you don’t have to participate every month, so there is no pressure there.…
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Baked Beet and Potato Chips
I plant long, full rows of potatoes and beets every year. Some might think that is overkill, but I make my mom’s potato salad a lot during the Summer (I told you, it’s great to bring to BBQs) and I usually can my beets, so I like to have a lot. My beet standbys also include beet chili and a roasted beet and goat cheese salad. I’m still working on the beet chili recipe and am trying to adapt it for the crock-pot. It’s become a game to me to see how many homegrown or handmade items I can put in a meal, so I will blog about my roasted beet…
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I’m Engaged and Going to Make My Own Wedding Dress!
I have been sitting on some exciting news for over a month now, but it’s time to announce that Matt and I have gotten engaged! He proposed in the most amazing and perfect way, in my garden, at dusk, with a ring attached to a garden gnome. It was a beautiful Friday evening and he lured me out to the garden, under the guise of picking snap peas for a salad. He even had champagne hidden behind one of the feed troughs, for when I inevitably said yes. After a few days of simply relishing the moment, we started talking details. One of the first things that came to my…
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Thrifty Gardening Tip: Free Wood Chips!
Got your attention? Good. Okay, technically they aren’t free. The tip should read: Develop a relationship with your local arborist, so they will give you free wood chips. In other words, once you’ve hired them for something, they will probably help you out in the future. We recently had to have some trees trimmed and so we hired Grun Tree Care. This was the first time I had hired an arborist, so I had no idea what to expect. When they pulled in to the driveway, with their wood chipper, a light bulb went off. It had been recommended to me, in my Comprehensive Organic Gardening class, that wood chips made good pathways…
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Mom’s Mustard Potato Salad Recipe
My mom is in a nursing home now and no longer cooks for herself, but growing up she made the best mustard potato salad. I remember it being one of the first things she taught me how to make, because I begged her to show me how. I’m so glad I did, because it has become a staple in our house. Matt absolutely despises mustard, but he loves my mom’s potato salad recipe, even though he knows it has mustard in it. He is constantly asking me to make it for him and get’s really excited when I do. I think it’s because my mom’s recipe has just the right…
