Category Archives: Recipes & Cooking

Favorite simple yet delicious recipes in my Texas Homestead kitchen.

Preserving The Harvest: Dehydrating Plums

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by Texas Homesteader

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I recently acquired two different varieties of ripe plums that totaled about 30 lbs. Now I love fruit, and plums are some of my faves – so sweet, so juicy! But I’m going to have to preserve some of these plums if I’m going to keep them from going bad before they’re all consumed.

I love plum jelly but I’ve made so much jelly lately including apple butter, blueberry jam and even honeysuckle jelly that I don’t need any more in my stockpile. Even though I like to stock my pantry with jellies to sweeten my homemade yogurt, with only two of us at home these days I don’t want to make more than we can use. What else can I do with these delicious plums?

Hummm…  I like to sweeten my homemade pumpkin granola with dried fruit and I recently used the last of my dehydrated jujube fruit. So maybe I can dehydrate these plums into raisin-sized chunks to naturally sweeten my granola?

By making my own dehydrated fruit instead of purchasing it, I've not only saved money but added no packaging to the landfill. Win/Win! #TexasHomesteader

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Using It All: MYO Tomato Powder

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by Texas Homesteader
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Recently I had a large quantity of tomatoes to preserve. In the process of making my sauce I removed most of the seeds and tossed them into my compost before I even cooked the tomatoes down.

When the tomatoes were cooked I used a sieve to separate the cooked tomatoes from the skins so I would have smoother sauce. 

Now I read somewhere that instead of throwing them away you can dehydrate the skins and grind them into powder to use to thicken soups or make your own tomato paste.

Oh yeah, I’m *SO* gonna do that!

Instead of throwing away tomato skins, dehydrate & ground them into powder to use to thicken soups or make your own tomato paste. #TexasHomesteader

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How To Pressure-Can Homemade Pasta Sauce

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by Texas Homesteader ~ 

I decided I wanted to make and pressure-can my own pasta sauce. Homemade sauce means you have complete control over what goes in (and more importantly, what DOESN’T!)

I’d already used my fresh garden tomatoes to make homemade tomato sauce. Now I’ll turn some of it into flavorful pasta sauce. Check out how easy it is! 

Now that I had made all this tomato sauce from my fresh tomatoes, I decided to make & can my own pasta sauce! Check out how easy it is! #TexasHomesteader

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Preserving The Harvest: Making Tomato Sauce

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Texas Homesteader ~ 

I came across a great deal recently on a large quantity of beautiful fresh tomatoes. So decided I would make them into homemade tomato sauce.

Tomato sauce is an ingredient I use quite a bit in my kitchen. And making these fresh tomatoes into tomato sauce was EASY! 

I found a great deal on fresh tomatoes & decided I would make them into tomato sauce, something I use quite a bit in my kitchen. EASY! #TexasHomesteader

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Preserving The Harvest: Canning Asparagus

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by Texas Homesteader ~ 

I grow asparagus in my garden each spring. But even if you’re buying it, asparagus is both fresher and less expensive when it’s in season. Wouldn’t you love to enjoy fresh asparagus throughout the year? Me too!

So I decided to preserve my fresh asparagus by canning it!

Canning Asparagus. I found a great deal on asparagus. I'd love to enjoy fresh asparagus throughout the year so I decided to can it! #TexasHomesteader

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Preserving The Harvest: Dehydrating Bell Peppers

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Texas Homesteader ~
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I’ve planted many bell pepper plants in my garden this year. But it’s still too early in the season for them to be producing. So I stumbled upon a great deal on bell peppers at the store recently. Yeah, I mean like 15 peppers for $0.99 kinda great deal! After I fainted and before I could catch a breath I grabbed up about 5 of them. Oh I suppose I could have grabbed more but I only wanted to buy what we would use.

Other than stuffed peppers (which RancherMan absolutely LOVES) I cook with bell peppers fairly often. Once I got home I found that I still had stuffed bell peppers in the freezer. Maybe I can just freeze them to use as an ingredient in my cooking? Hummm… my freezer space is pretty tight so there’s no room to chop & freeze them for later. What to do? I know – I’ll dehydrate them!

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