Your Practical Guide To Self Reliant Living
Autumn is cider season, but that means more than apple cider. Pear cider is a delicious way to enjoy the season and preserve pears at the same time. While the process of making pear cider is similar to making apple cider, the taste is as unique as a pear itself. Whether you enjoy pear cider fresh or ferment it into hard pear cider (known as perry), it’s well worth the effort.
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In planning our heirloom apple orchard, we were looking for a few hardy, reliable crabapples to act as pollinators. Most commonly crabapples are used for pollination, but the fruit are left to the birds. In my research, I was surprised to find that Dolgo crabapple is both an excellent pollinator, and produces incredibly tasty fruit. Double win!
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Elderberries have a very short season, and they barely have time to ripen before they’re gobbled up and carried away by the birds. If you have a keen eye and watch closely, elderberry bushes produce huge harvests of medicinal berries each year. Those berries make a quick and easy elderberry jelly that preserves their goodness all year long.
We often preserve them as elderberry oxymel, which is a honey-based probiotic cough syrup for winter colds. Elderberry mead is another one of our favorites. Both of those aren’t the best for young children, so this year I made a special batch of elderberry jelly for my jam loving babies.
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Nothing says fall like pumpkin, but sometimes it’s nice to enjoy their flavor outside of harvest season. Dehydrating pumpkin puree into pumpkin powder allows you to add pumpkin flavor to baked goods without adding a lot of moisture. Homemade pumpkin flour, nutritious, flavorful and a great addition to baked goods, including paleo and gluten-free recipes.
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Pumpkin is just one of those flavors that goes well with cream. Instead of worrying about topping your homemade pumpkin pie with whipped cream, try making pumpkin cheesecake. This easy pumpkin cheesecake recipe doesn’t need any topping to steal the show at your holiday table.
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Every fall the hedgerows are filled with color in my neighborhood. Thimbleberries and wild plums dot the roadside, and the clusters of bright red highbush cranberry are visible from a distance. I’ve seen those bushes every fall for the past 6 years and never gotten around to harvesting. In early September there are so many wild edibles, and they never made it to the top of my list.
This year, I learned that the bark of highbush cranberry is a potent medicinal, and that got me out foraging the very next day.
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Homemade jam is delicious and good for more than just toast. Thinking up creative ways to use jam throughout the year is part of the fun of canning. Every summer I go way overboard making homemade jams and jellies. Just about all of the jars are canned for the winter, but I always have to pop one open to try it right away. This week I’ve made 14 batches of jam, which means there are 14 opened jars of jam in my fridge right now.
Homemade Blackcurrant Jam
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I’ll admit the name “chokecherry” doesn’t exactly get your mouth watering. Anything with “choke” in the name sounds like trouble. The other common names bitter berry and bird cherry aren’t any more appetizing, but chokecherries are not only edible, they’re delicious. The berries can be a bit astringent right off the bush, but that astringency fades away with the proper preparation.
Chokecherries were a staple of the Native American diet, and are perfect for jelly, fruit leather and homemade wine.
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You don’t have to be a herbalist to know about the immune-boosting powers of echinacea. It’s one of the better-known herbs, and for good reason. Echinacea tea has been used for centuries to help fend off winter illnesses, and there are countless studies that show it’s an effective immune system stimulant.
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Goat meat probably isn’t the first thing you think of when you imagine tender, juicy, fall off the bone roasted meat. Well, at least if you live in the US or most of the western world. In many places, goat meat is the first choice for protein, and it’s amazingly flavorful and tender if you know how to cook it. One of the most forgiving cuts goat leg, and a properly slow roasted goat leg will top a beef pot roast any day.
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