Author: craig

How to Make Dandelion Coffee

Posted on by craig

Several years ago, a strange plant appeared in our garden.

We have a habit of letting these things grow, to see what nature has inadvertently given us. That strange plant ended up being wild mustard. With a little bit of googling, I learned how to harvest mustard seeds and then how to make my own mustard.

In the years since, we learned that wild mustard is an noxious weed in the province of Manitoba (because it will invade canola crops), so we acquired seeds for a different variety of mustard and now grow that. Mustard is an annual crop for us and friends and family look forward to my homemade mustard.

Since then, I’ve always been on the lookout for other edible plants in the garden, especially ones that we haven’t planted ourselves.

That’s when I focussed on the dandelions.

Dandelion Uses

Dandelion has several different uses and every part of the plant is edible. And while there are multiple varieties of dandelion, they are all safely edible, and there are no dangerous look-alike plants, so you can be confident in using the dandelions in your yard without giving it too much thought.

The uses of dandelion are surprisingly extensive. They include:

  • Dandelion wine
    • This is really good and I make a big batch every year
  • Dandelion jelly, sometimes known as “poor man’s honey”
  • Dandelion leaf pesto
  • Roasted dandelion roots
  • Medicinal salves

The list really does go on. I recently came across a recipe for “dandelion root fries”.

This year I tackled one I’ve been eyeing for a while — dandelion root coffee.

I’ve had dandelion root coffee a few times before, which is sometimes marketed as dandelion root tea. It has a surprisingly robust flavour that is quite similar to coffee. Sometimes it seems to have a hint of mocha flavour too. As someone that can’t have much coffee (I react poorly to it if I consistently have too much), I’m always on the lookout for good-tasting alternatives — and this is it!

Dandelion Root Coffee

The “how to” is surprisingly simple.

You dig up roots.

You wash them, dry them, and trim blemishes and straggly bits off. And chop them into small pieces.

You roast them. You can do them in the oven at 400 F for about 30-45 minutes; put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and give it a shake every 5-8 minutes. Alternatively, I used the air fryer with the same method — 400 F for 30-45 minutes, give it a shake every 5-8 minutes. The only difference is I lined the air fryer basket with foil instead of parchment paper.

Let it cool completely. Then store in a cool, dry place, in an airtight container.

To make coffee, you can either use the small pieces and steep them like tea, or you can grind them and use them in a French press, or any other coffee-making appliance. I used the same amount of ground roots as I do coffee.

The result? Delicious.

Even better — it costs nothing and it’s caffeine-free.

Dandelion Root Coffee

When roasted and ground, dandelion roots make a very tasty coffee substitute, with a full-bodied flavour and just a hint of mocha.
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Course Drinks
Cuisine Coffee

Equipment

  • Oven or Air Fryer

Ingredients
  

  • Dandelion Roots

Instructions
 

  • Wash dirt off dandelion roots and trim off any blemished areas or thin strands.
  • Chop roots into equal-sized small pieces.
  • Roast at 400° F for 30-45 minutes. This can be done on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper in the oven or in an air fryer lined with foil. Check every 5–8 minutes, shaking each time. If some roots are roasted and dried before others, they can be removed.
  • Allow to cool completely. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.
  • To make dandelion coffee:
    Roasted dandelion roots can be used in chunks or ground with a coffee grinder. If using chunks, use them like tea, steeping until desired taste is achieved. If using ground roots, use like ground coffee in a French press or other coffee maker, using similar number of scoops.
Keyword coffee alternatives, dandelion root coffee, dandelions

Garden Update: June 2024

Posted on by craig

After getting through the garden hibernation period—AKA winter—life is starting to appear in our yard again.

Many, many years ago, I knew a newcomer family that came from a very hot part of the world. Their first winter here was their first experience with below-zero temperatures. When the plants died off and the trees shed their leaves, they thought that everything was dead. By mid-winter, one of them asked a mutual acquaintance why no one was cutting down all the dead trees. It amazed and delighted them when spring rolled around and all of those supposedly-dead trees came back to life.

The garden is much the same.

When the snow first melts, all we’re left with is dead plant matter and barren soil. But when the spring sun finally starts to warm things up, then life comes rushing back.

While garden season in Winnipeg usually starts in late May, we’ve had a rainy late spring / early summer, pushing us into June. We’ve almost got everything in the ground now.

The Early Risers

There are a few very early signs of spring in our yard that mean the season is finally starting:

  • The double-flowering plum tree blossoms
  • The garlic we planted in the fall springs up
  • The rhubarb comes rushing back
  • The chives sprout straight up

The double-flowering plum trees covers itself in bright pink blossoms for about a week, then they all fall off and suddenly this seemingly-barren bush is covered in lush green leaves.

The plum tree, at least in this climate, doesn’t produce any fruit. It’s purely an ornamental tree. When I was researching that a couple years ago, amateur gardeners said it’s likely because the blossoms come and go before pollinators arrive, so it misses out on its chance to produce fruit.

I happened to catch a bumble bee happily working away on the blossoms while they were still in bloom. If that amateur gardener theory is correct, well, this early bee might mean we get a plum or two. If anything happens, I will report back on that progress here.

The garlic is always one of my favourite crops. I think it’s because we get two harvests out of them. There is, of course, the harvest of bulbs in mid to late summer—most of which I pickle—but in early summer come the garlic scapes.

Scapes are basically the flower stem of the garlic plant. They shoot up nice and high and then do several twists and turns. You let them get nice and big, but just before they start flowering, you yank them off the garlic plant. These scapes taste fantastic roasted on the barbecue or are a nice little treat if they’re pickled. There’s a vendor at the local farmers market who makes a mind-blowing hot sauce from garlic scapes, an idea I might explore this summer.

The dwindling pantry

This time of year is also where the shelves start to look a little bare.

We still have a lot left from last year, especially frozen chopped bell peppers and frozen chopped squash, but we’re down to our last few jars of apple juice and tomato juice, and we’ve long run out of things like frozen broccoli and salsa.

We really don’t like to buy what we don’t have to, so we haven’t had broccoli in months now and we’re eating a lot more bell peppers than we normally do. Our goal is to see if we can go a whole year without buying vegetables—and except for a few exceptions (like mushrooms and the occasional potato), we’ve managed to do that.

Although it’s a massive amount of work, I can’t wait for the preserving season to hit full-swing and I get to stock all of these shelves again. I always look forward to a year of great food.

Planning for a new year

As successful as the challenge has been, we’re always looking at what changes we need to make to do better next year. For us, this means increasing broccoli, paying attention to what tomato products lasted and what we ran out of, and figuring out how to massively increase our fruit production (because we don’t preserve or utilize much fruit, mostly because we haven’t grown much). A new challenge for us is to also expand our protein production with beans and the eventual crop of mushrooms, though the mushrooms might not happen till next year.

Oh, and we might be expanding our garden space yet again.

We do our whole property, the backyard of our west neighbour, and a strip along the fence of our east neighbour, but this year we might add some garden space at a retreat centre just outside of town. We’ve been offered some space there and John, my husband, AKA the gardener, has been out there to turn some soil over. It’s a great plot of land, but it’s a bit of a drive to get there, and on his first trip out there he came home with 19 ticks crawling all over him. So, we’ll see.

John determines which crops go where and there is a draw to the out-of-town garden. One possibility is moving our popcorn crop out to the retreat centre—they apparently do not have a squirrel problem. Last summer when we had popcorn in our neighbour’s yard, a solitary squirrel decimated our entire popcorn crop in less than half a day.

This Year’s Crop

If I’m remembering everything correctly, here’s what we’ve got ahead of us this year…

Perennials that come up every year:

  • Saskatoons (AKA service berries, June berries)
  • Raspberries
  • Strawberries
  • Blueberries
  • Horseradish
  • Mint
  • Oregano
  • Parsley
  • Thyme
  • Chives
  • Rhubarb
  • Flowers — I’m not sure if I’ll do anything with flowers this year, but in the past I’ve done lilac jelly and lilac wine, as well as peony jelly
  • Dandelions

Perennials from other people’s properties (not our neighbours) that we harvest:

  • Apples
  • Tart cherries

Things we’re planting, either as seedlings or as seeds:

  • Sweet peas
  • Peas for canning
  • Sunflowers
  • Corn
  • Popcorn
  • Leeks
  • Onions
  • Potatoes
  • Garlic
  • Chamomile
  • Basil
  • Catnip
  • Black Beans
  • Kidney Beans
  • Pinto Beans
  • Scarlet Runner Beans
  • Chickpeas
  • Tomatoes
  • Bell Peppers
  • Jalapeno Peppers
  • Hungarian Wax Peppers
  • Habanero Peppers
  • Kohlrabi (for our neighbour)
  • Cabbage (for our neighbour)
  • Broccoli
  • Brussels Sprouts
  • Kale
  • Spinach
  • Mustard
  • Ginger
  • Cucumber
  • Sweet Potato

Whenever I do a list like this, I always forget something, so there’s likely more than what’s listed here.

As well, tomorrow is our tenth wedding anniversary, and a tradition we fell into a few years ago is to go to a greenhouse on our anniversary and buy something new for the garden. We’re going to head out and look for a new fruit for the front yard. I’d love to get a cranberry bush, but they didn’t have it last year, so perhaps a haskap berry bush (which look like oblong blueberries).

I look forward to the summer and fall ahead as I start really filling this blog with recipes, updates, photos, and more. Thank you for tagging along on this journey.

How to Make Sourdough Bagels (with Three Flavour Variations!)

Posted on by craig

Over the last few years I’ve fallen in love with bagels for breakfast again.

I remember when the bagel craze hit Canada in the 1990s—there were bagel shops popping up all over the place. There was one near church and every Sunday after church my mom, my sister, and I would go there for lunch, and then on the way out we’d buy a dozen bagels and cream cheese so I could have breakfast for the coming week.

My favourite bagel at the time (and perhaps still is) was chocolate chip. That particular bagel store also made chocolate chip cream cheese. So every Sunday I’d head home with a dozen chocolate chip bagels and chocolate chip cream cheese.

I remember one particular Sunday where we decided not to have lunch, but rather my mom just sent me in to get my bagels for the week. The girl at the checkout counter packing my order seemed to hesitate when I said I wanted a dozen chocolate chip bagels. And when I also asked for two containers of chocolate chip cream cheese, she said, “Do your parents know you’re buying only chocolate chip?”

I think there was some implicit bias that chocolate shouldn’t be for breakfast. However, if a little dash of chocolate is going to make me eat a bagel and cream cheese and keep me full until lunch, what’s the harm in that?

So when I started creating a sourdough starter last year, one thing I was particularly interested in was making my own bagels—especially chocolate chip ones.

The Basic Sourdough Bagel Recipe

The first thing to master is the basic sourdough bagel recipe, which is not all too different from a basic sourdough bread recipe.

The full recipe is below, but in a nutshell, you mix up the ingredients the night before, let it rise overnight, form into bagels the next morning, and then boil and bake them to golden brown perfection.

Flavour Variations

Once you’ve mastered the basic recipe and done it once or twice, then the door opens to tweaking with flavour and toppings to get what you most desire. This can include mixing ingredients in with the dough the night before, or mixing ingredients in the next morning, or sprinkling something on top before baking them.

Here are the three that I’ve tackled:

  • Chocolate chip sourdough bagels
  • Cheddar and hot banana pepper sourdough bagels
  • Sun-dried tomato and basil sourdough bagels

All of them turned out super delicious. Chocolate chip is great with a thick smear of cream cheese, and the cheddar/pepper and tomato/basil ones make great breakfast sandwiches (with egg, bacon, mayonnaise, and a marmalade or hot pepper jelly).

How to Make Chocolate Chip Bagels

When tweaking the basic bagel recipe, the question I always have to ask myself is: When is it safe to add ingredients to the dough?

Since chocolate chips are stored at room temperature and shouldn’t spoil being in the dough overnight, I added them in during the initial mixing stage.

I prefer using mini chocolate chips, but if all you can find is regular size, roughly chopping them with a knife can make a wonderful difference. As for what kind of chocolate, I go with semi-sweet, but choose your favourite. Something tells me dark chocolate would go great with some butter and served with black coffee.

I went with 100g of chocolate chips, but if you like it a little sparser or a little denser, feel free to adjust to your taste.

How to Make Cheddar and Hot Banana Pepper Bagels

This is again a recipe variation that you can change to what you find locally and what your specific tastes are. If you prefer hotter peppers like jalapeño, or if you prefer fresh peppers (whereas I used pickled), go with the one you like best. I use cheddar because I always have it on hand and it’s the cheapest cheese at the store, but if you’ve got a nice sharp dry cheese in your fridge looking for a use, this might be the one.

I was again faced with the question of when to add my ingredients. Since my banana peppers are pickled, I chopped them up a little more and tossed them in with the dough the night before. If I was using fresh peppers, I likely would have mixed them in the next day.

For the cheese, I definitely did that the next day. Cheese at room temperature in a moist environment does not sound like good news.

How to Make Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Bagels

That eternal question of when to add the extra ingredients arises here again.

My tomatoes technically aren’t sun-dried, they’re dehydrator-dried, but they would work pretty similarly. A dehydrated / dried food in a moist environment will absorb the moisture, and you don’t want anything taking moisture away from your dough or else it might not rise properly. Additionally, now-moist tomato pieces at room temperature overnight does not sound good. So, I added these the following morning.

Since I was using dried basil from our garden, it was a similar issue, so I added it the next morning.

Stocking Up On Bagels

Much like when I went to that bagel store after church and stocked up, back in March I had a couple weeks off work and decided to stock my freezer with bagels. The batch makes eight bagels and I managed to get six batches done—48 bagels—so I enjoyed them for quite a while, and I think I still have a few kicking around in the freezer.

If only I could get some of that chocolate chip cream cheese, then my morning routine would be perfect.

Sourdough Bagels (with flavour variations!)

With a little bit of planning and patience, you can bake up some soft and delicious sourdough bagels to bring some sunshine to your morning breakfast!
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 hours
Cook Time 25 minutes
Course Bread, Breakfast
Servings 8

Equipment

  • Kitchen Scale (measurements are provided if you don't have a scale)
  • Large Bowl
  • Plastic Wrap
  • Large Pot
  • Baking Sheet
  • Parchment Paper

Ingredients
  

  • 150 g Active Sourdough Starter (about 3/4 cup)
  • 250 g Warm Water (about 1 cup and 2 Tbsp)
  • 24 g White Sugar (about 2 Tbsp)
  • 500 g Bread Flour, or All-Purpose Flour if you're in Canada (about 4 cups and 2 Tbsp)
  • 9 g Salt (about 1 1/2 tsp)
  • Cooking Spray
  • 1 Tbsp Honey (optional)
  • Toppings like sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and bagel seasoning (optional)

Instructions
 

Making the Dough

  • In a large bowl with plenty of room for the dough to rise later, whisk together the sourdough starter, water, and sugar. I find it best to whisk with a fork.
  • Add flour and salt. Whisk with fork until a rough dough is formed, then mix by hand until no lumps remain. The dough will be fairly dry at this point.
  • Cover the bowl / dough with a damp towel and let rest for an hour.
  • Work the dough into a smooth ball. I find it easiest to pick up the dough and smooth it with my hands, rolling it over frequently in my hands. Only do this for about twenty seconds so you don't overwork the dough.

Bulk Rise

  • Spray a piece of plastic wrap with cooking spray and use it to cover the bowl. The sprayed side is down so if the dough rises and touches the plastic wrap, it won't stick. Let rise 10-12 hours at room temperature, or 8-10 hours if you're in a warmer climate or keep your house warm.
    Sourdough is as much an art as it is a science. The more you make sourdough, the better you'll be at recognizing when it's ready. Because my climate is dry, I let it rise the full twelve hours.
    Since I do a full twelve hours, I do this as an overnight rise. If you're in a warm and humid environment and your dough takes about 8 hours to rise, you could do this as a same-day project.

Shape the Bagels and Second Rise

  • Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Give it a quick spritz of cooking spray.
  • Divide the dough into eight even balls. You can do this with the scale for a more exact measurement; I usually eyeball it. Roll each piece into a ball and let them all rest on the baking sheet for about fifteen minutes.
  • Shape the bagels. I poke a hole through the ball of dough and then insert a finger from the other side, twirling my fingers around each other to stretch out the bagel hole. I find the bagels "close up" the hole, so if you like a hole in your bagel, make it a little large knowing it'll get smaller in the next few steps.
  • Cover bagels with a damp towel and let rest at room temperature for twenty minutes.

Boiling Bagels

  • While the bagels are resting, fill a large pot with water and bring it to a boil. Stir in the honey. This will give the bagels a bit of color. (If you're vegan or allergic to honey, you can omit this.)
    While doing this, preheat the oven to 425 F.
  • When bagels have rested and water is boiling, add the bagels (two or three at a time) to the pot. Boil for thirty seconds on each side. The bagels usually float, but if they're at the bottom of the pot, give them a nudge with a slotted spoon to ensure it's not sticking to the bottom of the pot.
    This step gives the bagels a thin crust, which prevents it from ballooning like a loaf of bread when baking.
  • When boiled, transfer back to the baking sheet and boil the next batch.
  • Optional: When the bagels are cool enough to touch, you could dip them in bagel toppings like sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or bagel seasoning.
    I usually do not do this as plain sourdough bagels are quite nice.

Baking the Bagels

  • Place the baking sheet in the middle of the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.
    Optional: After removing them from the oven, you can flip the bagels over and bake for 2 minutes more. This will give colour to the bagel bottoms. I don't always do this because when I flip them sometimes they look toasty on the bottom already.
  • Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Notes

Flavour Variations:
Chocolate Chip Bagels
Add 100g of mini chocolate chips to the initial stage when adding flour and salt, so they get worked in nicely. If you don’t have mini chocolate chips, you can roughly chop regular sized chocolate chips. I use semi-sweet, but use any sweetness you prefer. You can also add more or less chocolate chips, to your preference.
Cheddar and Banana Pepper Bagels
This is a surprisingly good combination! You can use any amount of peppers and cheese to your preference. You can swap out banana peppers for any hot pepper you prefer. If using pickled peppers, chop them finely and add them in the initial step with the flour and salt. If using fresh peppers, add them the next day when working the dough into eight balls. Work the dough a little more than usual to work the peppers in. If adding cheese, add a little bit when dividing the dough into eight balls, again, working the dough a little extra to work the cheese in. Reserve some cheese to sprinkle on top of the bagels right before baking.
Sun-dried Tomato and Basil Bagels
Add sun-dried tomatoes and basil the next day when working the dough into eight balls, working the dough a little extra so the ingredients mix in. You can use any amount of tomatoes and basil to your preference.
Keyword bagels, Sourdough, sourdough bagels, sourdough starter

How to Juice Cherries Using a Steam Juicer

Posted on by craig

After hearing multiple times on food preservation blogs about the convenience of a steam juicer and how passionately people appreciate having them, I finally purchased one in late 2023. (This one, to be specific.) It ended up just sitting in its box on a chair in the kitchen for months.

I had several bags of cherries sitting in my freezer waiting to be juiced, but I kept putting it off thinking that, despite what people say online, it would be a messy, exhausting process. My traditional electric juicer is messy and exhausting to use with big batches—it’s the kind with the spinning grater that grinds up the fruit/veg and separates the juice from most (but not all) the solids. Whenever I would use that, I’d end up with bits and pieces of fruit/veg all over the kitchen, no matter how careful I am with being neat and tidy. And it’s a process that requires a ton of work, from prepping the fruit/veg, to manually pushing it through the juicer, to having to stop and clean out the solids every so often.

That juicer works terribly with cherries. I think the fruit is too soft and light and it ends up throwing the fruit around rather than truly juicing it. As well, to use that juicer I have to stem and pit all the cherries first.

I had five bags in the freezer, weighing somewhere around 30 pounds. I wasn’t going to stem and pit them all.

So, I finally pulled the steam juicer out and…what a revelation!

What is a steam juicer?

Steam juicers are a specialized piece of kitchen equipment consisting of three pots that fit together.

The bottom pot is filled with water and when the stove is turned on, this boils and releases steam into the system, which allows all the juicing magic to work.

The top pot is really a colander—the bottom and sides of it has dozens and dozens of holes. The fruit or veg gets put in this pot. The steam rises, releases the juice from the fruit/veg, and the juice drips through the colander holes into the middle pot.

This pan can fit a lot of fruit. It took only three run-throughs to process all my cherries.

The middle pot is almost bundt-pan like. There’s a hole in the centre for the steam to rise and make all this magic happen. The juice collects in this pot and, when you’re ready, there’s a hose and clamp attached to it so you can drain the juice into jars.

How to juice cherries using a steam juicer

Fill the bottom pot with water. If the instructions specify to fill it to a certain level, always follow these instructions. Mine did not have a specific level required, so I just filled it up to near-full.

Place the middle pot on top. My bottom pot has a little half-circle cut out of its top lip to accommodate the hosing from the middle pot, so if yours has that too, ensure these are properly aligned as it’ll mean the pieces are all fitting together properly.

Place the top pot on top.

Wash/rinse cherries and remove any with blemishes, underripe fruit, or anything else that looks less-than-ideal. I read through a handful of instructions online and it seems to be mixed on if the cherries should be pitted and destemmed first, so I did not bother with this.

Fill the top pot with cherries. In the photo below, mine are still semi-frozen. If you have frozen cherries, you don’t need to thaw them first.

Put the lid on.

Set the burner to high until the water boils, then reduce the heat so it continues to simmer.

Let the steam juicer do its work. I found it took about an hour for a potful of cherries to fully juice.

Every once in a while, carefully lift off the middle and top pots to check on the water level in the bottom pot. If needed, add hot water (or boiling water fresh from the kettle) to top up its levels. I also regularly checked on the volume level in the middle pot since I wasn’t sure how much juice was going to be pulled from the cherries—I didn’t want to run the risk of it overflowing and that precious juice falling down into the water pot. You can also check on the cherries in the top pot to give you a sense of how far along you are—once the volume had decreased about 75%, that was my cue that I was just about done. Please use oven mitts as the handles can get very hot.

When everything is fully processed, carefully remove from heat and use the hose to drain the juice into jars or whatever storage vessel you’re using. Once the majority of the juice has drained, you’ll want to carefully tip the pot forward a little bit to pool the remaining juice in front of the hose. To be safe, you might want to remove the top pot and put it aside, so the unit isn’t top-heavy and at risk of completely tipping.

Alternatively, to get the last of the juice, you can lift the middle pot right out and pour the juice directly from the pot into the jar, while being very careful not to spill hot juice on yourself.

How to preserve cherry juice

My attempt at juicing cherries resulted in about three gallons of juice. With this I set up three one-gallon batches of cherry wine and was left with a litre (four cups) of cherry juice. I just stuck these in the fridge so my husband and I can add it to our kombucha.

However, there are several options here:

  • If you don’t have a lot and will use it soon, put it in an airtight container and store it in the fridge.
  • Juice can be frozen in jars or plastic containers. When I freeze juice, I try to use straight-sided jars that don’t have shoulders—sometimes juice can expand when freezing and you don’t want to risk the jar breaking—and I leave about an inch of headspace. You can likely store it for several months before quality starts to degrade.
  • Cherry juice can also be canned! (This site has some instructions)
  • There are endless other options, including cherry wine, cherry jelly, popsicles, and more.

How to Juice Cherries Using a Steam Juicer

With the use of a steam juicer, juicing cherries is easy, quick, and clean, giving you pure cherry juice.
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Course Beverage

Equipment

  • 1 Steam Juicer

Ingredients
  

  • Cherries
  • Water

Instructions
 

  • Wash and drain cherries. No need to de-stem or de-pit them. Remove any cherries that have blemishes or are damaged.
  • Set up the steam juicer as per the instructions that came with your juicer. If you don't have instructions, fill the bottom pot with water till nearly full, then place the juice collector pot on top, and then the colander pot on top.
  • Fill the colander pot with cherries and cover with the lid.
  • Turn on stove to high until the water in the bottom pot is boiling, then reduce heat to medium and keep water simmering.
  • Let simmer for approximately an hour, until cherries have been juiced.
  • Turn off the stove and remove the pot from heat. Being careful since things are hot, release the lamp and drain cherry juice into jars or other storage containers. Cherry remnants may be composted or discarded.
  • Juice can be used immediately in recipes that call for cherry juice. If you're planning to use or consume it in the next few days, juice can be stored in the fridge. For longer storage, juice can be frozen in mason jars or other freezer-safe containers—but leave some headspace and avoid jars with "shoulders" in case juice expands when frozen as this can shatter a jar. Juice can also be canned using a water bath canner (this site has some instructions).
Keyword cherry, cherry juice, juice

Garden Update: December 2023

Posted on by craig

It’s been an unusual winter so far for Winnipeg. We’ve had very little snow.

For quite a while, it was looking like we’d have a brown Christmas, something we haven’t had since the mid-90s. But the days leading up to Christmas saw some snowfall. It wasn’t a lot, but it was some. Normally at this time of year we’ve got maybe a foot or two of snow, but so far this year we’ve got about an inch.

While it has been nice not having to do any shovelling, it has left us a little concerned about the garden.

We plant our garlic at the end of the summer and rely on a cold winter to keep the cloves in stasis until the spring warmth brings it to life and growth begins. Our winter so far as been hovering around 0 Celsius / 32 Fahrenheit—some days it’s just below freezing and some days it’s just above freezing. While I haven’t uncovered the garlic to check on it, my fear was that the warm days might’ve encouraged the garlic to grow. However, we’re fully past freezing now, so what’s done is done and we’ll see what happens in the spring.

The garlic patch is covered by garden debris to help insulate it over the winter.

The other risk we run with very little snow is water supply. While we prefer to water the garden with rain water, when we go through dry spells we rely on the city supply of water. This past summer was quite dry, which required a lot of city water. A handful of years ago, lakes in various parts of the province were low and water rationing was put in place. A dry summer followed by a low-snow winter might find us in that situation again. Here’s hoping we get several feet of snow in January through March.

But that’s enough worrying about things I can’t control.

Alcohol Projects

The honeydew melon wine finished a couple weeks ago and I bottled it up. I haven’t tried it yet…but I’m a little hesitant.

For background for folks new to the blog, I really dislike honeydew melon and John, my husband, is not really a fan of it. We grew it because our neighbour gave us some seedlings, and when we realized that neither of us want to eat it, I happened upon a recipe for honeydew melon wine.

Sometimes wine tastes like what it’s made from, like grape wine, dandelion wine, and cherry wine. But sometimes it doesn’t taste at all like what it’s made from and instead just tastes like a nice wine, like beet wine, parsnip wine, and corn cob wine. I didn’t know which type of wine honeydew melon would produce, but I certainly hoped for the kind that tastes nothing like what it’s made from.

Unfortunately, with the tiny spoonful taste I had, it was very melon-y. And it has an extremely intense melon-y aroma. Blech.

John thinks it’s all right.

We’ll leave it for a month or two before we crack open a bottle and see if ageing it changes the flavour and aroma. I found apple wine changed drastically over time, so here’s hoping the same is true of honeydew melon wine.

I’ve taken on a few other alcohol projects in the last couple months:

  • I did up a batch of rhubarb ginger gin. Normally this takes on a nice golden hue, but this time around it turned a bright, gorgeous pink.
  • As a bit of an experiment, I tried a lemon-lime soju, based on my recipes for grapefruit soju and orange soju. It has a lovely citrus taste and could easily be drunk as-is, but would likely taste wonderful mixed with a splash of sparkling water for a sort-of alcoholic Sprite.
  • Back in the summer when I was utterly exhausted from juicing apples and canning the juice, I’d sliced up a bunch and bagged them for alcohol projects. The first I’ve taken on is an apple whisky with a hint of cinnamon.
  • In addition, I’ve started a batch of apple liqueur. This one takes a couple months to make, so I’ll be sipping these summer flavours in the deepest depths of winter.
  • My mom had some leftover cranberries and rosemary at Christmas, so I threw those in a jar and topped it off with gin. I’ll let it infuse for a couple weeks, strain out the cranberries and rosemary, and see what flavour adventure I’ve created. At present, the gin has turned a brilliant red.

The sugar shortage continues

As I mentioned in passing in my recent pumpkin butter post, there’s a sugar shortage going on in Western Canada. Apparently all, or nearly all, of the sugar in Western Canada is supplied by one company that’s been on strike since September, which resulted in the shelves going bare in the grocery store as we were leading up to Christmas baking season.

That also meant I needed to ration my sugar supply. By making kombucha, I require a cup of sugar every eight to ten days to start a new batch—and with no end to the strike in sight, I can’t risk running out…which means not taking on extra projects.

However, a friend visited from Ontario, a part of Canada not experiencing a sugar shortage, and she brought us a 10 kilogram bag of sugar as a Christmas present!

This means I finally get to try out the new steam juicer I bought (CA Amazon, US Amazon). I’ve got three large ziplock bags of tart cherries in my freezer just begging to be turned into wine or liqueur. I normally find it a bit of a laborious process because of the juicing step, so I’m looking forward to using the juicer to easily create sediment-free juice—and then add a TON of sugar to turn it into wine.

When I try the juicer, I’ll post a review here on the site.

Planning for 2024

It seems the garden truly is a year-round project, even in a climate where half the year sees the garden frozen solid and buried in snow.

John and I are already having conversations about what we want more of, what we want less of, and how we might rotate the crops to get a better yield. Some areas of the garden are sunnier than others, the local ecosystem of certain patches can lead to higher yields, and some plants produce more when planted next to each other—all factors we consider when we plan for the summer.

But until then…

While we’re certainly thinking about the 2024 garden, it’s still months before we actually have to do anything. We unfortunately don’t have the space to set up seed starters indoors, so we rely on planting seeds directly in the ground and buying seedlings from the garden centre.

Our neighbour, whose garden we use, also provides seedlings that he starts at his house. Normally this is in the form of tomato plants—he provides us with several dozen seedlings of a whole variety of tomatoes—as well as a few other veggies. This year, after seeing how much we love bell peppers, he’ll also start a bunch of pepper seedlings for us.

But until that time of year rolls around…we just have to enjoy eating all our preserved produce and toasting with our garden wines.

How to Make Pumpkin Butter

Posted on by craig

For fans of pumpkin and all things autumn, pumpkin butter is a treat. I made a batch last year and took it along to work with a fresh loaf of homemade sourdough bread and a colleague described it as “a warm hug on a cold day”.

I’ve taken to gifting pumpkin butter to friends and family. It’s one of those things that feels luxurious and special, but it’s ridiculously easy to make. Given that pumpkin butter is something not found in stores—at least not around here—it doubles as a gift for those hard-to-buy-for people in your life.

Despite its name, there’s no butter or any kind of dairy in pumpkin butter. It’s basically pumpkin cooked to the point where it’s spreadable like butter.

Making pumpkin butter

In a large heavy-bottomed pot, dump in a 15oz can of pumpkin puree—or if you make your own pumpkin puree, put an equivalent amount in the pot. For us metric system folks, 15oz is just shy of two cups, so you could just put in two cups and not worry about the 1oz extra.

To this, add half a cup of apple juice—I used my own apple juice that I canned from a friend’s apple tree this past summer—two-thirds cup of brown sugar, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, and an eighth of a teaspoon each of ground cloves, ground ginger, and salt.

When I got to the brown sugar part of this recipe is when I discovered I didn’t have any in the house. John had done some baking a few weeks ago and must have used the last of it. Unfortunately, we’re in the midst of a sugar shortage here in Western Canada. Most (or all?) of our sugar comes from Rogers / Lantic, and they’ve been on strike since sometime in September. Nowadays you’re lucky to find sugar in the grocery store…right as we enter into Christmas baking season. All of this is to say that I didn’t bother heading down to the grocery store to pick up a bag of brown sugar since I knew chances of me finding some were slim to none.

Thankfully, there’s an easy fix for this—I had white sugar and molasses on hand, and brown sugar is literally just white sugar and molasses combined.

Since pumpkin butter isn’t a baking recipe that requires exact ratios of ingredients, I didn’t get too exact with the white sugar and molasses ratios. I put in the equivalent amount of white sugar, two thirds of a cup, and then poured in several tablespoons of molasses.

Once everything is in the pot, give it a big stir to mix it all up, then turn on the stove, bring it to a boil, and then partially cover it, reduce the heat, and let it simmer for about twenty minutes until it’s thick and glossy. You’ll want to stir it regularly with a rubber or silicone spatula so you can scrape the bottom of the pot to ensure nothing is sticking and burning.

At the start…
At the end…

Once you’ve reached your desired consistency—and do feel free to let it cook a little longer if you find it’s not thick enough yet—remove the pot from the heat and let the pumpkin butter cool. Once it’s fully cool, you can transfer it to containers or jars for storage. I like to use one-cup mason jars as this allows me to put one jar in the fridge and the rest in the freezer, so I don’t have to worry about a big jar of it going bad before I can finish it all.

In the fridge, pumpkin butter should last a few weeks. In the freezer, you’ll get at least a few months.

Enjoying pumpkin butter

I find that pumpkin butter tastes like pumpkin pie filling, which shouldn’t be too surprising—after all, it’s made with pumpkin, sugar, and some of the spices found in pumpkin pie.

I like to eat it on my morning toast or on a bagel. It’s nice enough that it could be part of a mid-day snack or even a dessert. A scoop of pumpkin butter on top of a flaky buttery (but plain) pastry would be lovely.

Pumpkin Butter

Pumpkin butter makes a wonderful autumn spread for toast and bagels, tasting almost like pumpkin pie.
5 from 1 vote
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Course Breakfast
Cuisine American

Equipment

  • 1 Large Pot

Ingredients
  

  • 1 15oz Can Pumpkin Puree (or homemade pumpkin puree)
  • ½ Cup Apple Juice
  • ⅔ Cup Brown Sugar (Packed)
  • ½ tsp Ground Cinnamon
  • ⅛ tsp Ground Cloves
  • ⅛ tsp Ground Ginger
  • ⅛ heaping tsp Salt

Instructions
 

  • Combine all ingredients in a large heavy-bottomed pot.
  • Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
  • Reduce heat and partly cover. Simmer, stirring regularly to ensure nothing is sticking to the bottom and burning, for approximately twenty minutes until mixture becomes thick and glossy.
  • Remove from heat, let cool. Transfer to jars or other fridge- and freezer-safe containers.
  • Pumpkin butter can be stored, covered, in the fridge for a couple weeks or in the freezer for a few months.
Keyword pumpkin, pumpkin butter

Making and Preserving Pumpkin Puree

Posted on by craig

Cans of pumpkin puree are something I generally don’t have on hand and when I set out to make something with pumpkin puree I typically completely forget to buy some when I’m at the grocery store.

What I do often have on hand, particularly in the fall and early winter, is pumpkins.

Making pumpkin puree is fairly quick and very easy. The end result is often on-par with what you’d find in the grocery store, though it may be a bit waterier, which may require adjusting the liquid in whatever recipe you’re using the puree in.

Before we dive in, please note that pumpkin puree cannot be canned in either a water bath canner or a pressure canner. If canning is your ultimate goal, your strategy is to pressure can pumpkin chunks and then puree the chunks when you need it for a recipe.

Choosing the right pumpkin

To start, you need a good pumpkin. Jack-o-lantern pumpkins are not good for this—these pumpkins have been bred for carving purposes, not eating. While they are, of course, edible, they’re not as tasty or as tender as a pumpkin intended for eating.

When it comes to planting time in our garden in the spring, we always plant a few jack-o-lantern pumpkins so we have something to carve in October (though this year we had a pumpkin thief run off with our humongous jack-o-lantern pumpkin!) and we plant a bunch of sugar pie pumpkins. When selecting your pumpkin seeds to plant, if you’re growing these pumpkins yourself, read the description to ensure it’s meant for eating.

This year we ended up with about ten sugar pie pumpkins. We store them in my mom’s basement along with the rest of our squash. (For those new to the blog, I don’t have a basement or any sort of cool storage space, so I use a basement bedroom at my mom’s house as my food storage central. In return for using her space, she has free access to our harvest.) I often find pumpkins are the first squash to go mouldy and disintegrate. Quite often the butternut, acorn, and spaghetti squash will last till about March or April—they seem to go mouldy when the weather outside turns to spring—but the pumpkin will go mouldy within a month or two. It’s currently December and most of our pumpkins have been thrown in the compost because they went bad before we could do anything. We still have a few hanging around.

Back to the puree…

Preheat your oven to 400 F.

Cut your pumpkin in half. This can be tricky and potentially dangerous depending on the thickness, size, and shape of your pumpkin, and the strength and dexterity of your hands—so be very careful.

I typically find if I can break the stem off, that lets me put the pumpkin stem-side-down on the cutting board. The stem area is often very tough to cut through, but the bottom of the pumpkin is a little easier to cut. However you cut your pumpkin, the more stable it is on your cutting board, the less risk there is of injuring yourself.

There are two ways I’ve found for cutting pumpkins and other large squash:

  • Using a large and sharp knife—larger than your pumpkin, if you have one that large—press the middle of the blade against the peak of the pumpkin and see-saw the knife back and forth. The knife doesn’t slide back and forth, you’re just pressing down and see-sawing it (alternating between putting the greatest pressure on the handle end and then the tip end). You may want to drape a tea towel over the tip end of the knife so you don’t risk cutting your fingers/hand in this process. It’ll usually be a bit tough to break through the skin, but once you’ve done so, it’s fairly easy to then slide it down through the rest of the pumpkin. As you start to meet resistance when you get to the thick and tough stem area, stop.
  • If you don’t have a knife large enough for the above method, or if you find it’s not a method you’re comfortable with or capable of doing, the other method I’ve found is to take a reasonably large and sharp knife and carefully stick the knife into the pumpkin. Because you’re starting with the sharp tip, it goes in fairly easily. You should then be able to cut down one side of the pumpkin. When you meet the resistance of the thick and tough stem area, stop. Then turn the pumpkin around, slide the knife into the cut at the top, and then cut down the opposite side, again stopping when you meet that resistance.

Whichever method you’re using, remember to always be conscious of where your fingers and hands are and, whenever possible, cut so the knife is going away from you. I’ve come pretty close to chopping my fingertips a few times.

Now that you’ve cut through about 90% of the pumpkin, there’s still that tough stem part you didn’t cut through. Put the knife aside and break the pumpkin apart manually. To do this, slip your fingers into the cut you’ve made—the pumpkin should “give” enough for you to do this—so you’ve got a pumpkin half in each hand, and pull it apart. The pumpkin should break fairly easily.

The next step is to clean out the pumpkin. Using a spoon, fork, or your hands—whichever works easiest for you, though I often find I use a combination of all of these—scoop out all the seeds and the stringy stuff in the interior. You could filter out the seeds and make roasted pumpkin seeds. I find we generally don’t eat them when we make them, so for us, I throw all the pumpkin guts, including the seeds, into our composter.

Once everything is cleaned out, give it all a sprinkle of salt, and then place them cut-side-down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. If you don’t have parchment paper, give the baking sheet a light spritz of oil or non-stick spray so the roasted pumpkin doesn’t stick to the baking sheet.

Then roast it in the oven for about 45-60 minutes.

You’ll know it’s ready when the skin starts to look a little bit wrinkly and the flesh of the pumpkin starts to pull away from the skin. When done, remove from the oven and turn the oven off. Let the pumpkin rest until it’s cool enough to handle.

With the pumpkin I roasted for this post, I didn’t really get much of that wrinkly or pulling-away effect, so I let it sit in the oven for the fully sixty minutes. When I let it rest to cool down, it then got very wrinkly and the flesh was clearly pulling away from the skin—I could tell because the skin was sinking down and looked like it had no flesh supporting it underneath.

Now comes the pureeing step.

Using a big spoon or other kitchen utensil ideal for scooping (perhaps an ice cream scoop?), scoop the pumpkin out of the skin and place in a food processor. The empty skin can be composted.

If your pumpkin is large or your food processor is small, you may need to do this in batches. Turn on the food processor and let it run until the pumpkin is fully pureed and smooth. If you find there’s a lot gathering on the sides, you may want to turn off your food processor and scrape down the sides with a spatula. You may also want to stir the pumpkin in the food processor as I sometimes find the chunky bits get trapped at the bottom under the reach of the blades.

In previous years, I’ve also done this with a hand blender / stick blender with the pumpkin in a flat-bottomed pot. It worked just as well but took quite a while and the blender got quite warm in my hand. So, ultimately, I’d recommend a standard food processor, but a stick blender will do the trick if that’s what you have.

In the absence of both a food processor and a stick blender, you could mash the pumpkin with a potato masher.

When the puree has a smooth consistency with very few or no chunks of pumpkin, it’s ready. I find it’s difficult to avoid chunks entirely, but I look at that as part of the appeal of homemade puree—it’s a reminder that I made this from scratch from a pumpkin my husband grew in our garden.

Storing your puree

From here you have two options for your next step.

  • If you’re planning to use the pumpkin puree in the next day or two, transfer the puree into a container and place in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.
  • If you’re not planning to use the pumpkin puree in the immediate future, the puree can be frozen in freezer-safe containers. I like to use one-cup (half-pint) mason jars; I fill them with puree and leave a bit of headspace in case the puree expands when frozen, and then put them in the freezer. Be sure that the jar you use does not have “shoulders” but is instead “straight-sided”. If it has shoulders and the puree expands as it freezes, it could push up against the shoulders and break the jar. Alternatively, you could put the puree into Ziplock bags and squeeze out all the air.
    • Most sources I see say that frozen pumpkin puree is good for about three months. However, I’ve had puree in the freezer for up to a year and it was fine when using it…so your mileage may vary on this.
    • The old adage of “when in doubt, throw it out” applies here. If you find pumpkin puree in the back of your freezer from an unknown date and it looks like it might be freezer burned or it’s crystallized a lot, you’re likely best to throw it in your compost.

Pumpkin puree cannot be canned in either a water bath canner or a pressure canner.

Using your pumpkin puree

You can use the pumpkin puree as you would use store-bought puree.

The only thing to be mindful of is that homemade puree tends to have more water to it, so you may need to adjust the liquid in the recipe you’re using so things don’t become too wet.

Alternatives

You could use this same method for pretty much any type of squash with a firm rind/skin.

My step-dad has made “pumpkin pie” using butternut squash before—you wouldn’t know it wasn’t pumpkin if he didn’t tell you—and he did it using one of our homegrown butternut squashes, so he would have followed this method or a variation of it.

Pumpkin Puree

Make homemade pumpkin puree for pies, breads, soups, and more.
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 15 minutes
Course vegetable
Cuisine vegetable

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Pumpkin
  • Salt, to taste

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 400℉.
  • Carefully cut pumpkin in half and scoop out the insides. The scooped-out insides can be composted or discarded. Alternatively, you could use the seeds to make roasted pumpkin seeds.
  • Sprinkle a little bit of salt on the pumpkin.
  • Place pumpkin halves cut-side down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
  • Bake in oven for 45-60 minutes, until the skin starts to wrinkle and the flesh pulls away from the skin.
  • Remove from oven, turn oven off, and let pumpkin cool until it is safe to handle.
  • Scoop pumpkin flesh out of the skin and transfer to a food processor. Depending on the size of the pumpkin and the size of the food processor, this may need to be done in batches.
  • Puree with food processor until a smooth consistency is achieved. Scrape down sides and stir pumpkin, as necessary, to achieve this smooth consistency.
  • Puree may be stored in the fridge for a few days or in the freezer for up to three months. If freezing in jars, ensure the jars are freezer-safe and are straight-sided (and do not have "shoulders", as this can lead to breakage if the puree expands while freezing).
  • Homemade pumpkin puree is often a little waterier than store-bought puree, so when adding puree to recipes, adjust accordingly.
Keyword pumpkin, pumpkin puree

Two Ways to Dry Hot Peppers (and What to Do With Them!)

Posted on by craig

In summer of 2022, I tried growing hot peppers for the first time. We had a few jalapeño pepper plants, half a dozen banana pepper plants, a Carolina Reaper plant, and a couple plants with what looked like Thai chilis. I figured we’d get a bumper crop of hot peppers, perfect for pickling and exploring other possibilities with.

But our peppers in 2022 were a dud.

We did have some success. We got two to three peppers per plant with the jalapeños and bananas, and a bunch of little Thai chilis, but we got no Carolina Reapers. I made a handful of jars of pickled peppers but it barely lasted half a year before they were gone.

When 2023 rolled around, we decided to triple our hot pepper plants so we’d get a decent amount to work with.

Well…I don’t know if it comes down to the specific varieties of plants or if it was just ideal weather conditions this year, but we got a massive harvest of hot peppers. Each plant—we had jalapeños, bananas, Scotch bonnets, and cayennes this year—produced dozens of peppers. We were up to our ears in hot peppers.

After making a couple dozen jars of pickled hot peppers, a batch of candied jalapeños, and two types of hot sauce, and giving a bunch away…we still had hot peppers coming in.

Pickled hot peppers
Candied jalapeños

I was at my wit’s end with hot peppers and wanted to just throw the rest in the compost, but my husband persuaded me to just try drying them so we can sprinkled hot pepper flakes on pizza and other things.

Thankfully, I listened to him.

I did some digging on the internet and found out about two methods of drying peppers and then two methods of processing them afterward. While it wasn’t super clear which method was ideal for which pepper, my guideline was this:

  • For peppers with thick walls, and thus lots of moisture, I went with the dehydrator to dry them quickly and fully, without the risk of things going bad. These peppers I ground into a powder that can be thrown into various recipes that need a kick. In my case, this included the jalapeños, bananas, and Scotch bonnets.
  • For peppers with thin walls, and thus not much moisture, I hang-dried them. These peppers were put in a food processor to turn into flakes for putting on pizzas and other dishes. In my case, this was with the cayennes.

Drying Peppers in a Dehydrator

With the bulk of peppers—the jalapeños, bananas, and Scotch bonnets—I chopped them up and threw them in the dehydrator at about 125 degrees Fahrenheit and just let them sit. The guide that came with my dehydrator said it would take about twelve to sixteen hours.

After twelve hours, they were certainly dehydrated, but I wanted them even drier. My goal was to grind them up into a powder so I wanted them as dry as I could get them. We left them in the dehydrator for three days.

At this point, they were so crispy that they easily broke if I touched them too hard. Perfect.

If you don’t have a dehydrator, you could try doing this in the oven if your oven is able to go that low. But I’m not sure if I’d want to leave my oven running for 2-3 days. Alternatively, some folks can get by with just turning on the light in the oven and letting that heat build up and dehydrate food. This may take longer than three days to get the desired crispiness, but it’s a lot less risky than leaving the oven on for three days, and won’t heat up the house as much.

Be aware that dehydrating hot peppers in a dehydrator—and presumably an oven—makes the house smell like hot peppers. This can make it hard to breathe if it’s strong or if anyone in your house has any sort of medical condition that can make breathing difficult. It’s best to do this in a well-ventilated space, perhaps by cracking open the kitchen windows to clear out the hot pepper fumes and bring in some fresh air.

Once the peppers were fully dry—and you can see how they’ve shrunk in size with all the moisture gone—I threw them all in a blender and let the blender do its magic. In a few minutes, I had an orangey powder that is nice and spicy. (You may want to crack open some windows when blending them because it gets a little intense.)

I like to use this in soups to give them a kick. It also works great if you’re making a Spanish or Mexican rice and want to add some heat. We’ve also sprinkled this directly on pizza for a bit of a zing.

Drying Peppers With the Sun

The easier, though much longer, way of dehydrating peppers is to hang them in a window and let the sun do its work. This can take a few weeks or a few months, depending on how sunny and warm it is.

To do this, start by cutting a slit along the length of each pepper. This allows the moisture to escape and prevent mildew. Next, thread the peppers together. All I had on me was twine, so I tied the stems of each pepper so they all hang together nicely. If you have some sturdy thread (perhaps fishing line) and a needle, you could easily string them together by poking the needle through the tops of the peppers.

I’d started by hanging them in the kitchen where it gets a lot of ambient light and there’s good air circulation, but I eventually moved them to my husband’s office window. It has a southern exposure so it gets lots of sunlight, and it’s directly above an air duct, so it would get lots of ventilation from the air conditioning and then the furnace as we shift into fall.

Though there’s only one string in this photo, I eventually ended up with five strings of peppers. The nice aspect of the hang-dry method is you can just add strings of peppers whenever you’ve got them and just leave it all till they’re all ready; you don’t have to do everything at once like you would with a dehydrator.

After several weeks, I took them down. They were all nice and paper-crisp.

From there, I chopped off the tops and carefully looked over each pepper. I had one that had gone mouldy on the inside—the black and mottled colouring on the outside was my cue that something wasn’t right on the inside. The rest seemed to be fine.

So, into the food processor they went.

I chose a food processor over a blender because I wanted a different end product than the dehydrator-dehydrated peppers. For those ones, I wanted a hot pepper powder, so using a blender meant the peppers were continually pushed down to the blade and could be ground into a powder. For these cayennes, I wanted hot pepper flakes, like what you put on pizza, so I didn’t want the powder result of a blender. The food processor chops things wonderfully but since the blade doesn’t go right to the very bottom, it lets flakes sit there without being chopped to powder. (You may want to crack a window while processing because the smell can get a little intense.)

I had to do two batches because I had too much, and I couldn’t quite get the consistently-small flakes like you get in the store, but the end result looks gorgeous.

These will be great for sprinkling on pizza or any other dish that needs a colourful garnish that provides a kick.

Garden Update: October 2023

Posted on by craig

With an unusually warm October for Winnipeg, our gardening projects have continued a week or two longer than they normally do.

All of our vegetables and fruit are harvested and preserved (canned, fermented, frozen, and/or put in storage) and as I write the draft of this post, I’m currently drying the last of our herbs. Parsley is in the dehydrator right now and thyme will go in tomorrow. After that, I have to finish up the mustard seed—I have a few plants drying in large paper bags and I need to break out the seeds and filter out the detritus—and with that, make a batch of mustard. The ginger still needs to be dug up, though we’re undecided if we’re going to put it in a pot and turn it into an indoor plant or if I’m going to make candied ginger with it. In my September update, I’d mentioned the plan to dig up and remove the horseradish from the front yard—at this point I think we’re keeping it where it is for one more year.

As I’m typing the draft of this post, my husband is building a pergola in our front yard—a large wooden structure for the grape vine to wrap itself around. Previously he’s used a structure made of dried out sunflower stalks (which are surprisingly durable) held together by rope, but it really wasn’t a long-term solution. This September, a windy storm knocked the whole thing over.

This pergola has become a community endeavour. John (my husband) is one of those people that knows everyone in the neighbourhood. He got initial advice from our neighbour, who directed him to another neighbour across the street—and that fellow has become John’s co-worker on this project. John has little to no experience building wooden structures or woodwork in general, so this across-the-street neighbour’s help is greatly appreciated. In order to put the posts securely into the ground, John borrowed a post-hole-digger from another neighbour down the street, who similarly offered advice on the project.

If it were me doing this, I would have just hired a company, LOL. But, John being John, this has turned into a more-affordable project that is almost community-driven. (On the plus side, when John sent me to the hardware store for the washers he forgot to buy, I noticed another neighbour down the back lane had put their old barbecue out with the trash—so I got a new-to-me barbecue that’s a definite improvement over our old one, which I would have missed out on if John hadn’t taken on this project.)

The pergola is done now!

Our grape vine is certainly going to love this! These are red wine grapes. In the spring, we might buy a white wine grape vine to plant on the other side of the pergola. Hopefully in a few years we’ll have enough grapes in a summer to make small batches of wine.

Speaking of wine…

The garden wines, also from the September update, continue to ferment. (If you’re looking at making garden wines at home, check out my Rough Guide to Making Country Wines post.)

To sum up, the following are still fermenting:

  • Chokecherry wine (this might be almost finished)
  • Beet wine (does not taste like beets)
  • Honeydew melon wine
  • Corn cob wine (does not taste like corn)
  • Grape wine (this might be almost finished)
  • Rosemary wine

Since the last post, the sour cherry wine completed its thing and I bottled it up. It is amazingly delicious! I got seven half bottles (375 ml)—we drank two of them pretty quick, we shared two with the person whose cherry tree we raided, I put two in storage for next summer (my step-dad lives out-of-country and will be back in the summer, so I’m saving a handful of different wines to share with him), and I have one bottle left that John and I will likely pull out soon. We like to share some wine when we’re watching a season premiere or season finale of a show, so we’ll likely share it this week when we start season three of What We Do In The Shadows.

The sour cherry wine retained much of its cherry taste, which was a nice surprise. (Some wines like beet, parsnip, and corn cob lose their original taste—thank god.) And now I’m in a bit of a conundrum. I have a big bag of cherries sitting in my freezer, waiting to be used for something…and I don’t know if I should make more cherry wine, more cherry gin (which tastes phenomenal with simple syrup and lemon juice), or more cherry liqueur (which is also phenomenal). I’ll have to do a survey with friends and family to see which they liked best.

Levelling up

Because of the magic of the Instagram algorithm, the app shows me content from food preservers and homesteaders. Around this time of year, they’re all showing off their pantries filled to the brim with canned and preserved goods.

I think I’m almost at that level. At least for us, a family of two, I’m at that level. (Quite often these social media posts come from content creators who come from families of four or more—they would need to produce and preserve a lot more food than we would.)

Because our house is tiny and doesn’t have a basement, we’ve been using my mom’s place for food storage. Unfortunately, it’s always been a bit of a mess that my mom has thankfully put up with. This year, John got in his organizing mode and decided we needed to treat my mom better. We got a bunch of metal shelving units from the hardware store and lined them along the walls in an unused bedroom in my mom’s basement. It’s now our food storage room. We keep all of our jars of preserved food in there, our wine-making equipment, and the squash.

We keep the potatoes in a separate room in my mom’s basement, one that does not have a window and where the door is rarely opened. The total darkness keeps them fresher for longer.

As usual, we filled up my mom’s chest freezer, mostly with rhubarb. This year we bought a small chest freezer for our house…and quickly filled it up. So we bought another small chest freezer for my mom’s basement…and it’s half full. (And in case you’re wondering, the freezer attached to our fridge was filled to the brim with veggies back in June.)

We clearly have a year’s supply of vegetables.

As a thank-you to my mom for letting us take up so much space at her house, she has free access to any and all food stored at her place. She’s been enjoying the pasta sauce, salsa, and beets that I canned this year.

Celebrating the harvest

Every year as the garden wraps up, I host a Garden Harvest BBQ, where most of the dinner ingredients come from the garden.

This year the dinner included:

Appetizer:

  • Pumpkin sourdough bread
  • Grilled baguette slices
  • Basil pesto
  • Pickled banana peppers
  • Cowboy candy (candied jalapeño peppers)
  • Pickled beets
  • Toum (a fluffy garlic spread)
  • The pumpkin, basil, peppers, beets, and garlic all came from our garden.

Main Course:

  • Garlic and rosemary grilled pork chops
  • Roasted Brussels sprouts, butternut squash, and potatoes
  • The garlic, rosemary, Brussels sprouts, squash, and potatoes all came from our garden.

Dessert:

  • Black bean brownies
  • The black beans came from our garden.

Drinks:

  • Mint tea
  • Rhubarb wine
  • The mint and rhubarb came from our garden.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures to share with you… but it was delicious!

Looking ahead to November

Gardening is really a year-round activity, especially when you go all-in on food preserving and homesteading (even just urban homesteading like we’re doing). While things certainly slow down in November, they don’t cease.

In early November I’m going to treat myself to a steam juicer—this one, I think—as it will make juicing apples, rhubarb, cherries, and tomatoes so much easier. I’ll have to test it next year to see if it works well with cucumbers; my concern is the heat of the juicing process might dampen the freshness that’s associated with cucumber juice.

When it arrives, my first project will be juicing that bag of sour cherries, provided I figure out if I’m making liqueur, gin, or wine.

Buried in the back of my freezer, I also have pincherries. This is something my stepdad harvested when he was here this summer. I’ve never worked with them before, so I’m not sure what to do. Since I don’t have a ton of them, maybe I’ll soak them in some gin and make pincherry gin. (If I do that, then I think that reduces my options with the sour cherries to liqueur or wine.)

Sometime in the next month or so, our popcorn—what little of it we were able to save from the squirrel—might be dry enough to pull from the cob and start using on movie nights.

The squirrel story: We had somewhere around 60 cobs of popcorn, which would have easily been enough for a year’s supply. In half a day—half a day—the squirrel either ate, partially ate, or absconded with 54 cobs. Yes. Out of 60, we’re down to 6. We harvested them right away, but they’re supposed to fully dry on the stalks before harvesting and then dry further in the house, so I’m not sure if the early harvest will affect the poppability of the popcorn.

Looking ahead to next year

We’re always thinking of what to do next year. What do we want more of, what do we want less of, and what do we want to introduce?

There was some concern that the neighbour whose yard we use would move, but he’s committed to staying at least another year. To sweeten the deal, my husband offered to help him tend to his flowers all of next summer.

We definitely want our lengthy list of usuals: Brussels sprouts, broccoli, beets, onions, cucumber, peas (for canning), sugar snap peas (for snacking), potatoes, squash (pumpkin, spaghetti, butternut, acorn), bell peppers, hot peppers, popcorn, sweet corn, tomatoes, kidney beans, black beans, garlic, celery, mustard, green onions (I think they’re also known as spring onions), sunflowers, Saskatoons (AKA June berries or service berries), blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, rhubarb, horseradish, basil, rosemary, parsley, mint, dill, and thyme. I’m sure I’ve forgotten one or two things.

I know we want to increase our mint (John has a renewed love for mint tea) and our fruit. Part of increasing fruit means buying more blueberry plants and possibly getting another grape vine. But it also means figuring out what other fruits we want and figuring out if we can grow them in our climate—I definitely want to try watermelon again (we’d tried it this year, but the squirrel…), and if this honeydew melon wine is tasty we’ll want more of that.

Another thinking project for next year is figuring out where we want to plant things.

Part of this means where in the yard. Mustard is better in the back yard because it gets covered with insect eggs in the front yard. This year we moved the celery from the front to the back and nearly the whole crop was destroyed by slugs.

Very little celery was salvageable.

Part of this also means which property. We been invited to use up some of the garden space at a meditation retreat centre just outside of Winnipeg where—(wait for it…)—they do not have a squirrel problem. Our popcorn is definitely going out there.

John may move both our sweet corn and popcorn out to this rural garden, which frees up a ton of space at home. Ideally, corn is alternated with beans year after year—corn uses nitrogen and beans replenish nitrogen—so we will likely be growing beans in our corn patch next year. We can only eat so many beans, so we also need to figure out which beans to grow and at what quantities and what to do with them. We definitely want more black beans as we’ve almost used up this year’s supply already (I made a batch of black bean brownies and today I made a batch of black bean tofu).

As well, it’s gotten me thinking…if we’re looking at alternative protein sources like beans, should we be expanding our meatless meal options? Both John and I don’t eat a lot of meat and we like the idea of being friendlier to the environment, so this is leading me to wondering if chickpeas and possibly lentils could be grown in our climate. As well, we don’t consume a lot of dairy, so can we look at homemade non-dairy milks and cheeses made from legumes? Those are questions to explore over the winter.

The big unknown for next year is the sour cherries. The couple that owns the property where we pick cherries has pointed out that the tree is dying and might not last much longer. If it does die, we’ll have to find a new source of cherries. (I think a house across the street from us has a cherry tree—the strategy might be to send John over there to make friends with yet another neighbour.)

Enjoying the harvest

The big task over the next eight months or so is to simply enjoy the harvest and the months of effort put into food preserving.

We have a full year’s supply of vegetables—we’ll run out of broccoli pretty quickly, since we didn’t get a big harvest, but that’s easily made up for by our over-abundance of bell peppers—and we easily have a year’s supply of lots of canned goods. As the wine fully ferments and gets bottled, we’ll likely have a year’s supply of it. Grocery bills dip in the winter due to all this, but more importantly, quality of life skyrockets with all this gourmet homegrown produce.

I mentioned in an earlier post about how we expanded into our other neighbour’s yard this year with just a strip of their property along our shared fence. We may or may not expand beyond that strip in their yard next year. I think they want us to expand so they don’t have to mow the lawn, but it’s also a lot more garden work for us, and we’re realizing we do have limits. This neighbour is a group home with a couple residents and a few regular staff. One of the absolute joys this year was to show up at their doorstep and give them bags and boxes of vegetables, most of which were grown on their property. We’ve learned that one of the residents there absolutely loves fresh corn on the cob, carrots, and potatoes. Whether or not we expand further in their yard next year, I think we’ll be sharing more of our over-abundance with them. It helps build neighbourly relations, but more importantly, my husband loves knowing that someone is truly enjoying the work he puts into gardening, and he definitely has a very appreciative fan next door.

The only appreciative fan my husband dislikes is the squirrel.

How to Make Butter Chicken Sauce (with Canning Instructions!)

Posted on by craig

Tomatoes are always a problem in our garden because we always have too many.

In summer of 2022 we somehow ended up with 49 tomato plants. This year, we swore not to do that again…and ended up with 60. It’s partly a “too many cooks in the kitchen” kind of thing—we buy tomato plants and then our neighbour who we share garden space with will surprise us with tomato seedlings he grew at the end of winter. We gave away a handful of plants, but still had an over-abundance this year.

But after making lots of salsa, pasta sauce, and tomato juice—and given that we still have leftover ketchup, green tomato chutney, and tomato soup from last year—I needed more recipes.

The Idea…

One way we like to think about gardening and food processing is to look at what we buy in the grocery store and ask ourselves if we can do that ourselves at home. We landed on butter chicken and curries.

I tried looking for butter chicken canning recipes and came up with nothing. Absolutely nothing. There appear to be no lab-tested recipes. Further, people who cook butter chicken and curries from scratch often write about how the freshness of the ingredients is what makes it really good, and canning would dampen that freshness.

If I were to make it from scratch, though, I’d be using dried spices since I’m not going to find a lot of fresh Indian spices in Winnipeg unless I perhaps go to very specific grocery stores.

So… my determination to do this project in hand, I set off in new directions.

In the strictest of senses, this would be considered “rebel canning”, which are canning recipes that are not lab-tested and thus can’t be guaranteed for safety. However, I decided to work within the canning rules and I’ve come up with something that works. You are allowed to swap out dried spices in a recipe or adjust the dried spices, provided you’re not putting in huge gobs of dried spices and turning a sauce into a thick paste.

With that in mind, I looked at my super easy canned pasta sauce recipe. Really…butter chicken is a tomato-based sauce with Indian spices. There’s a bit more to it—like adding butter, which is a no-no for canning—but a good sauce base would give me what I need to make a super convenient dinner.

Finding a standard butter chicken spice mix was my next challenge. There does not seem to be a standard.

I eventually settled on this:

  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp smoked paprika
  • 3 tsp garam masala
  • 2 tsp ground coriander
  • 1 tsp ground cardamom
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

This make more than you need—which is just two or three tablespoons—but if you’re like me and you’re swimming in tomatoes at the end of the season, you’ll likely be making multiple batches.

This year when I was looking for something in the spice aisle at Safeway, I discovered they carried a premixed butter chicken spice. After quickly checking there was no cornstarch in it (which is sometimes added to prevent caking, but is a strict no-no for canning), I bought a couple bottles and used this rather than the homemade spice mix.

(If you don’t have a lot of spices at home already, buying a premixed spice mix is way cheaper than buying half a dozen individual spices.)

(I fully recognize that as a person who does not share this heritage, I am basing my tastes on Western ideas of what butter chicken should taste like. If you have a more authentic spice blend, I would love to hear about it!)

Making Butter Chicken Sauce

Maybe “sauce base” is more accurate, since during the dinner-cooking stage, you can add coconut cream and/or butter.

Anyway, it’s fairly straight forward, so I won’t write out the whole thing in this post. (It’s identical to the pasta sauce recipe, just with different spices.)

In a nutshell, you put the tomatoes in your slow cooker. If you’ve got oodles of cherry tomatoes, just wash and de-stem them and load them into the slow cooker. If you’ve got bigger tomatoes, chop them up a bit and perhaps de-core them if they’ve got dense cores.

Throw on some of your seasoning—I used about two tablespoons for a 12-cup slow cooker’s worth of tomatoes—and let it simmer on high for about two and a half hours or on low for about five hours.

Once everything is cooked, blend it all up with a handheld / stick blender. Give it a taste and add more seasoning if you feel it needs more.

From here you can either use it fresh if you’re using it in the next day or so. You can freeze it in dinner-size portions. Or you can can it in a water bath canner.

I find one-cup / half-pint jars make enough sauce for two people, so I do them all up in this size. You’ll want to add half a tablespoon of lemon juice to each jar (or a tablespoon to a pint jar, or two tablespoons to a quart jar) and add in sauce, leaving a half-inch headspace. Wipe the rims, put on the lids to fingertip tightness, and process for 35 minutes (adjusting for altitude if necessary).

Using Your Butter Chicken Sauce

When it’s dinner time, I fry up some chicken and veggies in a pan and then dump in a jar of butter chicken sauce. If I feel it needs a little more “sauciness”, I might add in a small can of coconut cream. And since it’s butter chicken, I add a dollop of butter and stir it until it melts and fully incorporates. Serve over rice and with a side of naan.

Delicious.

Butter Chicken Sauce

A tasty and highly customizable sauce that makes for easy weeknight dinners. Plus, it can be canned so it's shelf-stable until you're ready to use it. This recipe is more of a template without exact quantities, but safe canning instructions are included.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 2 hours 30 minutes
Canning Time (if canning) 35 minutes
Course dinner
Cuisine Indian

Equipment

  • Slow cooker (See notes for alternatives)
  • Hand blender, blender, or food processor

Ingredients
  

  • Cherry tomatoes (Can use regular tomatoes. See notes for more details.)
  • Butter chicken spice mix (See notes)
  • Olive oil (Or a neutral oil like canola oil)
  • Lemon juice (If canning the sauce)

Instructions
 

  • Wash and de-stem tomatoes. If using tomatoes larger than cherry-sized, chop them into halves or quarters, depending on their size.
  • Fill the slow cooker with tomatoes. Add a drizzle of olive oil, no more than a few tablespoons. Add in seasonings (see notes for details). Stir.
  • Cover and set slow cooker to high and let cook two and a half hours, or until everything looks fully cooked (the juice has released from the tomatoes, cherry tomatoes have popped, etc.). If you prefer to use the low setting, let it cook for five hours.
  • Using a hand blender / stick blender, blend everything until a smooth consistency. If using a regular blender or a food processor, process in batches until everything is a smooth consistency.
  • Sauce can be used immediately or refrigerated for next-day use.
    If freezing, put sauce in meal-size portions in ziplock bags or jars. If using jars, be sure to use jars that do not have "shoulders", and leave some headspace in case the sauce expands while freezing.
    If canning, add a tablespoon of lemon juice per pint jar or two tablespoons per quart jar. (Do not use a larger size. If using half-pints, add half a tablespoon of lemon juice.) Leave a half-inch of headspace. Wipe rims clean and put on two-part lids, fingertip tight. Process in a boiling water canner for 35 minutes (adjusting for altitude if necessary, see notes for a link). After processing, let sit in canner for 5-10 minutes, then remove jars from canner and place on a towel on a level surface and let sit for 12-24 hours. After this time, check that jars have sealed—unsealed jars should be refrigerated and used within a few days, sealed jars can be stored for up to a year and a half (after which point the flavour quality may degrade, but the safety remains indefinitely). See notes for more information on canning. I find one cup / half pint jars the ideal size for two servings.
  • See notes for suggestions on how to use this sauce.

Notes

Alternative Methods to Cook the Tomatoes:
This can be made in a slow cooker or in the oven. If using the oven, lay out an even layer of cherry tomatoes in a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 35 minutes at 450 F, until the cherry tomatoes are wrinkly and bursting. You may want to line the baking sheet with parchment paper for easy cleanup. This can create a nice roasted flavour. I’ve also done a large batch of pasta sauce (which is the same as this, just different seasonings) in my dutch oven—all the steps were the same as the oven directions, but in a dutch oven rather than a rimmed baking sheet.
Butter Chicken Spice Mix:
The first year I made this, I whipped up my own butter chicken spice mixed based on some recipes I found online.
To make your own butter chicken spice mix:
  • In a bowl, combine:
    • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
    • 2 tsp smoked paprika
    • 3 tsp garam masala
    • 2 tsp ground coriander
    • 1 tsp ground cardamom
    • 2 tsp ground cumin
    • 1 tsp ground ginger
    • 2 tsp ground turmeric
    • 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
If you’re buying a pre-mixed package of spice, read the ingredients to ensure there is no cornstarch in the spice mix.
Whether using pre-mixed spice or home-mixed spice, add one to two tablespoons to the tomatoes. After blending the fully-cooked tomatoes, take a taste—add more spice and blend, if necessary.
General Tips:
While the recipe works great for cherry tomatoes, this works equally well with larger tomatoes, cut into either halves or quarters, depending on the size. If the larger tomatoes have a thick/firm core, you may want to core the tomatoes as well.
This sauce tastes super good fresh, and just as good frozen or canned. The first year I did this, I froze all the sauce, but for the second year I did this, I canned the sauce. There’s really no difference in quality or taste either way. I prefer canning because freezer space is limited, but if you have freezer space and/or canning intimidates you, freezing is an excellent option.
If you are new to canning, click here for a Canning 101 to understand some of these terms and steps. If you have to adjust for altitude because your elevation is greater than 1,000 feet, click here for more information.
Please note that this recipe has not been lab tested and in the strictest sense would thus be considered rebel canning. However, when canning it is acceptable to swap out dry spices without affecting food safety. This recipe is based on safe pasta sauce recipes, just with different seasonings.
How to Use the Sauce:
When cooking your protein and vegetables together in a large pan, simply pour the sauce on top and let simmer until fully cooked, hot, and fragrant. Butter chicken usually has butter mixed in, so feel free to add a good dollop of butter to the pan and stir as it melts and mixes with the sauce.
If you prefer the sauce to be a little creamier, feel free to add a small can of coconut cream to thicken it up. Alternatively, you could create a slurry of one tablespoon of cornstarch and one tablespoon of water and then add this to the sauce in the pan.
Do not add coconut cream or cornstarch to the jars before canning as this is unsafe for canning. These ingredients can only be added in the final cooking stage.
Serve the protein, veggies, and sauce over a bed of rice and a side of naan.
Keyword butter chicken sauce, canning meals, curry sauce, easy dinner ideas