East-West Fusion: Kimchi-Style Cucumber Pickles

I love pickles.
When I was a little kid, around five years old, my mother caught me drinking pickle juice right from the jar. This disturbed her greatly, not only because I had ruined a jar of pickles by putting my germy little lips on it, but, because she was sure that much acid was going […]

Weekend Kat Blogging: Playing Hide and Seek

Kat has learned to crawl.
Okay, that isn’t entirely true–she has learned to creep around, but she can do it quickly now. Of course, this means we need to get baby gates, and install them and install outlet covers and all that stuff that we have today that we didn’t have when we were kids […]

Savoring the Fruits of the Season: Spiced Blueberry Applesauce

I love applesauce, but generally only when it is homemade.
When I was a kid, my Mom and both grandmothers ruined my ability to eat store-bought applesauce by making it from scratch from really good apples.
Compared to the somewhat chunky, thick, tart-sweet and cinnamon-laced concoctions they made the applesauce from the store tasted like […]

Some of My Memories of Canning

I was recently invited by Dave Tabler, author of an excellent, interesting blog called Appalachian History: Stories, Quotes and Anecdotes to write a guest post on how the art of canning has changed from when I helped out my Grandma on the farm, and now.

So, if anyone is at all interested in hearing a […]

Preserving the Beauty of Tomatillos For Winter

Tomatillos are a gorgeous fruit, and they are an integral ingredient to one of my favorite cooking sauces from North America–salsa verde. The fruit, which is encased in a papery husk like a leafy Chinese lantern made of mulberry paper, is often thought of as simply green in color, but the truth is, the hues […]