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Winter Salad with Butternut Squash Greens Chicken and Candied Pecans

This salad! I should have taken more pictures of it. This isn’t even really the finished salad, just the almost-finished salad. The finished version disappeared too fast to take pictures. (The finished salad has chopped nuts and dressing on it). This is the perfect winter salad, and the perfect antidote to the cookies, cakes, cocktails, and candy…

Chicken Tikka Masala Because I Miss All The Restaurants in San Francisco

I am a country girl, through and through. I love living wayyyy out in the sticks. I love it that if I want to wear my work boots with manure on them and dirty old jeans and carhartt jacket into town, no one looks at me funny. My mud-covered pickup truck fits right in here….

On Killing Chickens Graphic Post

This is the story of how we went from having too many roosters running around to having a freezer stocked with chicken: This post is graphic and may be upsetting to some people, so if you’re going to start crying/be traumatized/send me hate mail, you should click away right now and go read about baking cupcakes…

Our New Chickens and how to integrate multiple age Groups of Chickens and Young Chickens Into Your Flock

I swore that I would take more pictures of the baby chicks this time around, and I totally didn’t do it. They just grow so fast; before you know it, their feathers are in and they’re starting to look like chickens instead of little stuffed animals. I’m really excited about some of the breeds we have….

I Love Winter Gardening: Greens & Sausage Gravy

When I first started keeping a vegetable garden, years ago, I was mistakenly under the impression that you only can grow things in the summer, between the frosts. Once I realized that you can grow vegetables year-round here in Northern California, I really fell in love with winter gardening. There’s none of the concern about…

Corned Beef Hash

corned beef hash March Charcutepalooza Challenge: Brining MARCH 15, 2011 ~ 3 COMMENTS For the March Charcutepalooza challenge, we made corned beef, which then ended up in a whole bunch of dinners: Corned Beef and Cabbage This dinner pairs slices of corned beef with gently simmered vegetables right out of the garden. That cabbage in the picture is the…

Mint Syrup & Rhubarb Mojitos

This project started out as an attempt to preserve spring herbs. When I first started my garden, years ago, I was working with this bare hillside covered with brush and weeds. I didn’t really have any experience with garden planning and made some strange choices, once of which was to plant a whole bunch…

Make This Now: Tomato Jam

I haven’t posted many jam recipes recently. Mostly, I hate writing down recipes. Then, I end up feeling like I really prefer simple jams anyway and that the magic isn’t really about my recipe so much as the fruit itself. Great jam isn’t because of my recipe, it’s because of the farmer/mother nature/ the…

Citrus-Quince Marmalade with Fresh Rosemary

I’ve been having a bit of trouble finding inspiration for preserves this winter. I went a whole month without canning a single thing, which I think has to be a record since I started canning. I realized that the reason this had happened is that I started getting my fruit sourcing really dialed in last…

Brandied Cocktail Cherries

I’m crazy about these cherries. They’re so dark and elegant, with a touch of brandy and vanilla bean. They were inspired by these great looking brandied cocktail cherries that Aimee from Homemade Trade suggested to me. I didn’t change the recipe much– mostly I just canned it to make it shelf stable instead of something for…