This recipe for lightly sweet and crisp sweet pickles can be made one quart at a time. Perfect since the garden doesn’t always crank out those fresh cucumbers at the same rate. And this sweet pickle recipe is so simple anyone can do it!
I love fresh spinach, and I love that during early spring it produces so prolifically. We like to eat as much spinach as we can while it’s fresh and crisp but I also want to preserve that delicious, healthy spinach to enjoy later in the season – way after the plants have bolted and are gone. I experimented with dehydrating fresh spinach this year and I loved the results. I wrote this piece for one of my favorite publications, Mother Earth News. C’mon y’all – check it out!
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Five is not a large number, and 5 frugal things aren’t difficult for most households to accomplish. I’m hoping this short list of easy frugal things we did at our own home one day might inspire you to look at your own tasks. Perhaps you’ll start tackling just 5 easy things to save money in your own home.
As an added bonus, almost always those money-saving tasks are environmentally friendly as well. So without doubling your effort you’re able to double your effect! Gotta love it, right?? See what today’s short list of 5 frugal things are in our home…
RancherMan & I are able to live & work here on our Homestead – a place that speaks to our hearts – because we are very careful with our finances. You know what they say, “small leaks sink great ships” or, you know, something like that…
Anyway, my point is that by paying attention to the smaller things, living frugally just becomes a way of life. There’s really no sacrifice, just a consciousness of frugal tasks that make sense in the flow of our days. In my case frugality is only part of the reason I’m paying attention – many times those same tasks are also environmentally friendly too. And that’s a two-fer win for me!
What a year! RancherMan & I have enjoyed a wonderful year filled with fun projects and new endeavors. Here’s hoping your year has been wonderful as well. To celebrate this year coming to a close, today I’m sharing with you the TOP 10 Homesteading Posts of the Year! Curious to see the most popular posts on the blog this year? Read on, dear friends.
(Note: Some links in this post are for further information from earlier posts I’ve written. But links preceded with * are affiliate links. If you click them and buy something (almost anything, not just the item noted) I could receive a small purchase. But the price you pay will NOT change. It’s an easy way to support this blog without anything coming out of your pocket. So click often! Thank you!)
OK by now y’all know I’m a dehydrating fool! I bought my dream appliance, an *Excalibur 9-tray dehydrator and I think I’m in love!
I’ve put that thing through the paces, dehydrating all kinds of fruits and veggies. And I’ve even made Italian-flavored tomato leather to just roll out and plop on my homemade French-Bread Pizza. No rehydration needed! I think it’s safe to say I’ve been bitten by the dehydrating bug.
I use many dehydrated veggies in my wintertime simmering Endless Soup. And I use most of my dehydrated fruits as replacement for raisins in my Homemade Pumpkin Granola.
But I’ve also been dehydrating veggies to grind and use for my own homemade powdered seasoning. I hate to pull out a large dehydrator to dehydrate such small portions, and it almost seems even my other small household model is a bit much.
Check out today’s Homestead Hack. I’ve found a way to quickly dehydrate small amounts of food for FREE!
I made and water-bath canned apple cider and it was delicious. It’s just the byproduct of cooking down the fresh apples from my aunt’s tree. Nothing else was added – no water, juice, sugar or seasonings. Pure, sweet, delicious!
I like to use plain unsweetened applesauce as a delicious snack and also as a replacement for some of the oil I use when baking. But I made a LOT of applesauce. I’m thinking about maybe using some of it to make an even sweeter treat: Cinnamon-Vanilla flavored applesauce.