I was dehydrating lots of vegetables from my garden. Each one was placed in a repurposed glass jar in my pantry. Then I decided to assemble various dry veggies, add some seasoning and make dehydrated salsa in a jar as a gift. The gift recipients LOVED IT!
By Texas Homesteader ~
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Tomatoes are the darling of the vegetable garden around these parts. Some like to plant squash, some like peppers. But by golly almost everyone has a tomato bush (or two, or three…) in their garden!
None of my tomatoes will go to waste. Even when they’re producing too fast for me to eat fresh. I like to dice & dehydrate those fresh tomatoes to use in my wintertime soups. It’s easy!
by Texas Homesteader
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This year I planted heirloom sugar pumpkins in my garden. And when it was time to harvest them I knew I’d first be able to enjoy them for a bit as decoration. I love the way those little pumpkins looked propped on our antique cast-iron Franklin stove.
But several days later I was in the kitchen enjoying the last of my favorite pumpkin granola. I knew that since I planted those delicious pumpkins for use in my granola it was time to cook those babies down into pumpkin puree.
by Texas Homesteader ~
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A dear friend told me about dehydrating tomato puree (sometimes seasoned) into a leather. WHAT?? Tomato leather??
Yes, tomato leather can be used to simplify your pizza night. Just plop a tomato leather on top of your crust and start adding fillings. The leather rehydrates as the pizza cooks. Oh yeah, I’ve gotta try this!
by Texas Homesteader
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Working with barbed wire (and pasture plants with thorns) means blood stains are a common laundry stain problem here on the Homestead. Maybe you struggle with it too?
Come see how I’m able to remove blood stains from RancherMan’s shirts.
by Texas Homesteader
We have two tractors, a 55 hp Mahindra for the big jobs and an older and smaller 32 hp Ford 1910 tractor for mowing, disking, etc. RancherMan usually hops on the newer big-boy tractor with the higher horsepower and front-end loader to do the rough stuff. And I happily allow him those tasks.
Recently our Mahindra dealt us an unpleasant blow by having a deteriorating gas tank, rendering it USELESS. So much for the reliability of a fancy-schmancy tractor that’s only 5 yrs –OLD!
So RancherMan went to work playing tractor mechanic for the Mahindra. But it was the ever-faithful Ole Blue Ford tractor that pulled the load on the Homestead.
by Texas Homesteader
A few weeks ago I started playing with recipes for making my own healthier fudgesicles. I used RancherMan as a very willing guinea pig for several batches until I perfected it.
Taste-Testing Homemade Fudgesicles? RancherMan’s got a tough job, huh? Poor guy!
I wanted to make my own fudgesicles for several reasons: They’re healthier, filled with probiotics, produce less landfill trash, are much less expensive. Plus, c’mon let’s be honest – it’s EASY!
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?
