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Garlic Dill Refrigerator Pickles
The last few years, I have finally gotten growing cucumbers down to a science. Ever since we got some trees removed, the front yard gets plenty of sun now, so my yields overall have improved. With cucumbers specifically, I have gotten better at remembering to continually harvest, so that the plant keeps producing. What that means, is that I now have cucumbers coming out of my ears! I love garlic dill pickles and have tried several pickle making techniques; canning and fermenting among them. In my experience, the crispiest, tastiest pickles have been the refrigerator pickles I’ve made. The only ingredients you need to make delicious garlic dill refrigerator pickles…
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Happy Birthday Rake and Make… and Goals for 2013!
Well, I did it. My first post was on February 19th, 2012, so Rake and Make is one year old as of today. This will be my 53rd post, which means I met my goal of posting an average of once a week! I recapped 2012 in another post, so I won’t go into that again. Instead, I’d like to take this time to talk about my goals for 2013. Since Rake and Make is a gardening, cooking and crafts blog, I have goals in all three areas and a few overall goals for blogging in general. GARDENING– Grow more blueberries– I really need to work on my blueberries. A couple…
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2012 Year in Review
So I had plans for the some blog posts that I just haven’t had a chance to get around to, such as post about my lovely Renfrew cowl neck shirt that I made to wear to holiday parties (and did wear…a lot). I will do a full post later, but here are a couple of photos in the meantime. I also really wanted to write a “year in review” post to highlight some of my accomplishments this year with gardening and crafting. As many of you know though, my mom has not been well since June. I wrote about it here. She never got much better after that and just…
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Canning Season!
Without even realizing it, and due to my little urban farm, I have adopted the age old farmer’s routine. Spring and Summer are the planting and growing season and late Summer/early Fall mark the time for harvesting and preserving. Fortunately for me, I like this kind of structure and dependable repetition, so it suits me just fine. I preserve food mostly by freezing or canning it. I freeze soups, sauces, and berries and can pickled things and jams and jellies. I like to can things that are fun to give away… or hoard (sometimes it’s hard to share)! Apparently I only can things that are red or green. I’m not…
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Harvesting Garlic
Matt and I love garlic. We put it in everything. Last year I grew garlic for the first time and cured it in the basement for a couple of weeks and then made a braid of about 13 of the heads. I then hung the braid on my baker’s rack, thinking it would last us awhile. We went through it in about four months. So this year, I planted three times that amount. Some people don’t bother with growing garlic, because it takes up space and stays in your garden a long time. I planted this crop last October and it is just now ready. I think it’s worth the…
