It’s official…I’m finally home

So I’ve been living in my new home and cooking with my new kitchen for oh, about 10 months now, and I only just got around to canning my first batch of anything: Vanilla Pear Butter. And now I finally feel like I’ve arrived. We were away most weekends throughout the summer and early fall,…

What was I thinking??

I’m a beaten and battered locavore foodie tonight. As is my Virgoan tendency, I bit off more than I could chew. With Chris away on his San Diego bachelor party adventure (so jealous!) I decided to make the most of some new equipment I invested in recently, and get down to business canning. First on…

Beets galore

Last week after getting home from a weekend at the cottage I inspected the beet patch to see how things are going. Low and behold I had gargantuan Chioggias coming out of my ears. I should have known, as they are the earliest of the beets I like to grow. I also have some Detroit…

Positively pickled

I think my house smelled like dill pickles for a week after this. It started with garlic dills and dilly beans. And then I bought more cucumbers for making relish. But I had way, way too many. So they became sliced garlic dills, with some added chili to kick them up a notch. I made…

Canning quickie

I know after all those posts last week I’ve kind of disappeared again this week, but it’s because I bit off a bit more than I could chew with the canning and the sewing this week. Bought a bushel of roma tomatoes on Monday and set to work making tomato sauce, and holy cow was…

Pear Butter featured by Canning Across America

How cool is this? Be sure to check out Canning Across America’s blog and Flickr pool — great stuff. Long live the canvolution!!

Relishing the summer

You know I just had to get right on top of the canning once I got back to the city this week. I noted as part of my grocery restocking when we got back from Wabakimi that we were out of relish. I was about to add it to my shopping list when I thought,…

We be jammin’

Yesterday was the first of my two-day G20 holiday, and all week the weather report for Thursday has been up and down. One minute it was calling for rain, the next for sun. My plans vacillated between gardening (of which there is always work to be done) and making jam. I wasn’t going to bother…

Custom canning labels

I meant to post about these back in November, when my colleague at work, graphic designer Matt Webb designed them for me. I paid him in pickles. He used my own photography as the background and I had him make two sizes, one to fit the standard-sized jars and the other to fit the wide…

The quest for pear butter

So now that I’m fully initiated into the iPhone cult, I can post to my blog while we drive to the cottage! No, I’m not doing the driving. Ever since I had the vanilla pear butter with artisanal cheeses at the now dead-pooled restaurant Locavore, I’ve wanted to make my own version. I hated pears…