Welcome!
Hello and welcome!
In today’s era of mass-produced and over-processed food, eating healthy seems next to impossible. The same old recipes, even with the freshest of ingredients, become boring and uneventful. Fresh fruits and vegetables go bad before you’ve had a chance to cook with them.
Sound familiar? I’ve been there and done all that. I’ve learned so much over the past thirty years, and now I wish to share that knowledge with you. I sincerely hope that the recipes, tutorials, and step-by-step instructional videos you’ll find here will help you make the most of your fresh garden ingredients for your family during the summer, and also preserve your garden’s bounty for the winter months when grocery store produce is both lackluster and at a premium.
A doctor explained to me why grocery store produce is often of such poor quality. It’s pulled before it’s ripe! Green bananas, drab tomatoes, sour berries, and peaches you could use to hammer a nail into a wall have all been pulled prematurely. Why? Because they would all spoil before they reached your local market. I asked the doctor why the ripeness of the produce affected its nutrition, and his response astounded me. He explained that only within the last few days of growth do 70% of the nutrients enter the fruit or vegetable! Only 30% of the nutrition we’re told we’re getting makes it into the food! No wonder the human condition is growing unhealthier with each generation!
These numbers motivated me to change the way growing and preserving fresh garden food is viewed. My husband Kip and I have grown and preserved our own food for years now, and have gained a wealth of knowledge through research and experimentation … but mostly through trial and error. We want to share with you the—ahem—fruits of our experience that will help you feed your family well all year round.
My niece, bless her, has been after me for a while to get this show on the road, so to speak. She and her husband, as well as some of their friends, are all young adults who want to improve the way they feed their families. They, like you, want to grow their own food to not only become less dependent on the grocery store’s in-season, on-sale, always-a-roulette-whether-it-tastes-good-or-not produce, but also to provide healthier diets for themselves and their children.
I have been cooking and preserving my own food for more than thirty years, and in those three decades I’ve certainly made some tasty discoveries, but I’ve also learned a lot of things the hard way. Let me teach you. Once you get to a certain age, after you’ve raised your kid and your favorite songs end up on the oldies station, you start to feel the need to do something more with everything you’ve learned. Helping the next generation live healthier and avoid culinary pitfalls takes the sting out of my first car being listed as a “classic!”
If you’re already well-versed in preserving your own garden products, have a look through these pages anyway. You’ll find delicious recipes to add to your repertoire, calling for both fresh and preserved food. My tutorial videos also show step-by-step recipes from my cookbooks, soon available for purchase right here on this website.
After many years, the first cookbook is almost complete: not one recipe will go untested (or untasted). A second cookbook is soon to follow, so check back here often to purchase them when they launch.
It’s richly rewarding to grow your own food and provide your family with the delicious, nutritious food we were meant to eat. It’s not the big, scary, monumental undertaking you might think, but if you still need more convincing, spend some time with me and I’ll show you what to do with what you grew!