Your Practical Guide To Self Reliant Living
Fresh lemongrass isn’t something you see every day. It’s one of those things that’s usually reserved for ethnic markets and specialty stores. You can imagine my surprise when I came across bundles of fresh lemongrass in our local food coop, with a big bright tag that says “Locally Grown in Vermont.” Vermont grown lemongrass?!?! Really? …
We all have it. That favorite comfort food that eases the stress out of us after a particularly harrowing day. You’re thinking of yours right now… My favorite comfort food, fried brussels sprouts with sriracha aioli, comes from the appetizer menu of our local pub. I’ve been trying to recreate it at home for months, but clearly, I…
I’m a serious apple pie fiend. I’ve tried it every way you can imagine, even the unconventional. Give me your old school lard crusts, and I love it. Make it savory by adding in sage and brie and it’ll be my dinner all week. When I came across a scrumptious summer recipe for blackcurrant shortbread…
Mead is a staple in our homebrew routine, and we’ve been making honey wines for over a decade. When it was time to brew another batch with rhubarb, I of course reached for the honey and started a bubbly honey based batch of homemade rhubarb mead. But wait…what if I want to taste the rhubarb,…
I never had Brussel Sprouts as a kid. I know it’s one of those things that kids are supposed to hate, but it never occurred to my parents to make any vegetable other than canned corn or canned green beans. On really special occasions, my mom would buy a can of asparagus. In college, other…
We’ve all had it happen. That rogue onion that manages to hide at the back of the bin. Once onions come out of cold storage and hit the supermarket shelves, it’s only a matter of time before they wake up and start trying to grow. The outside will become dry and papery, and the whole…
Walking at the edge of the woods in early June I ran across a breathtaking tree that I’d never noticed before. It was covered in white flowers with an intoxicating tropical scent. Plums and apples had long since stopped blooming and set fruit, and they leaves weren’t quite right in any case. Plucked off a…
Wasps can be difficult to trap, especially in the early summer when they’re just building their nests. That small spring population will quickly get out of control, one a nest becomes established and dozens of wasps hatch out. Without wasp traps, out backyard becomes uninhabitable during the summer time. There are so many wasps hovering…
Fresh green beans are one of those things you won’t understand until you grow them yourself. Growing up we had canned green beans, in all their slimy, salt-laden glory. In college, a friend made me fresh green beans for Thanksgiving dinner and I was blown away. But it wasn’t until I tasted a fresh green bean,…
My first home in Vermont had a huge patch of bee balm growing right outside my bedroom window. I’d wake up to a flurry of hummingbirds in the summer, arguing over the nectar inches from my window glass. There was never a need to put up a hummingbird feeder, the bee balm took care of…
Go looking for birch beer these days and you’ll find sugary sweet soda with just a few drops of birch oil added. That wasn’t always the case, and real birch beer, alcoholic birch beer, has been brewed for 100’s of years. Birch beer, birch wine and birch mead were made just about anywhere in the…
