Categories
Books Canning & Preserving

Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation

Typical books about preserving garden produce nearly always assume that modern “kitchen gardeners” will boil or freeze their vegetables and fruits. Yet here is a […]

Categories
news Self-sufficiency

Preserving Cherries Andy and (mostly) Dave Hamilton

Town planners of 20th century often included cherry trees in their planting schemes as they loved the blossom. The fruit was something of an afterthought, but not for us foragers. It has meant that added to the list of usual places to hunt for cherries you should include housing estates and parks. You will more often than not find the bitter bird cherry. but on some occasions you can strike the jackpot and find some deliciously plump variety that will rival anything you can buy in the shop. During June/July we are well into fruit season and the most opportunistic amongst us will not have to buy any fruit again until there is snow on the ground. This is a time when fruit is …

Categories
news Self-sufficiency

Free Deer Meat

We went to town this morning to pick up a few things and just as we got back the phone rang and it was my brother, Rob. He said, ” Ah…what are you doing today?” My brother doesn’t call to just chit-chat so I knew he needed something and I said, “Nothing.” And we really didn’t have plans to do anything special anyway. He said he had a deer and wanted to know could he bring it out to skin and cut up. So I said sure. After all, we’re getting pretty good at it. Why not? So he brought the deer out.It had been given to him by some of his first wife’s family. It …

Categories
news Self-sufficiency

Venison Heart and Liver with Mushrooms Meal

You were expecting cookies or candies, I suppose…. well, we did make cookies and cherry pie but this post is about what I made for supper. The deer meat sitting in the cooler can’t sit there for more than a couple of days and room in the freezer is..questionable so some of it had to be used and I was curious about the heart and liver. Phil normally is more of a fan of liver than I am but I do like heart meat. I did a little investigating online and then came up with this: Take the heart and clean it out really …

Categories
news Self-sufficiency

Ham

I just wanted to show off our Christmas ham. I wish I could send out samples so you all could taste how perfect it was. Normally my hams are a little dry but this one was wonderful. It cured for about 3 weeks and was in the smoker on 250 for about 6 hours. It was a pretty big ham and we were pleased that it was done so quickly. The rest of the meal was great too though we cooked way too much as usual. Hope you all had as nice a Christmas as we had!

Categories
news Self-sufficiency

Deer Burger and Jerky

The other day, as you who read the last post know, I made deer burger and jerky. Originally I had thought to keep the deer leg whole but I just don’t have enough room in the freezer. My brother posted a Youtube video on facebook about adding bacon to your ground deer meat to make burger and I have plenty of bacon so decided to do it that way. I got all the white skin off of it and it ground up really nice and easily. Every now and then I would throw in a hunk of bacon and keep grinding (the …

Categories
Books Canning & Preserving

Real Food Fermentation: Preserving Whole Fresh Food with Live Cultures in Your Home Kitchen

Preserve your favorite foods through every season with Real Food Fermentation. Control your own ingredients, techniques, and additives. Learn a practical food-preparation skill you’ll use […]