The crop of lemons is coming in. One large glass jar is sufficient to hold a years supply of preserved fresh lemons for cooking. You simply quarter a lemon lengthwise and stuff inside the jar with a pinch of salt. The salt will draw out the lemon juice which will preserve the lemons.

Spearmint and peppermint are two plants we keep in planter pots for fresh cooking, and for making mint jelly for grilled lamb. Easily and quickly made fresh, and can be kept in a small jar in the fridge.

Tomato lemon marmelade, fresh and tangy . Picked at the peak of tomato sweetness, preserved safely with the acid of lemons and sugar and a five minute waterbath. We use it year round on cheeseburgers, with cheese and crackers, on french bread as luncheon, on omelettes and in scrambled eggs, on french fries and hot dogs instead of ketchup. Use a teaspoon when you need a slice of tomato.

We make wine and jam from our own grapes: spanish tempranillo, french mourvedre, and french grenache noir grapes. Lots of seeds. I make one quart jar of jam from 4 pounds of grapes, add agave syrup nectar. Here is how we remove the seeds, which reduces the jam to 3 cups of jam from 4 pounds of grape clusters. Year round summer sweetness for sandwiches.

The home farm harvest from 2023 is all preserved, and traditionally, after eating so much for the Holidays, between Christmas and Mardi Gras Day 2024 is when all foods that were preserved in 2022 should be eaten, used and discarded if suspect. Some foods, however, had a bad harvest and we will continue to use them till the new crop is in, as long as we feel it is safe.

Lemon Cucumbers are ripe in the garden, always all at once, time to pickle them for the year. They are fresh tasting, have a slight citrus flavor, and are delicious when pickled in vinegar, sugar, dill weed and garlic.They stay crisp year round with this pickling method and don’t need refrigeration. We boil the brine, boil the cucumbers, then sterilize the filled jar in a water bath. To keep them crisp, we soak them first overnight in salted ice water. They are the size of tomatoes, so we slice them horizontally to use on hamburgers, in salads, and as a side dish. The seeds are crunchy and flavorful, do not remove. This recipe is for one half gallon mason jar. We use 4 half gallon jars a year.

Here is a three hundred year old method of making marmelade from bitter oranges, using the whole unpeeled citrus fruit. Meyer lemons are a type of bitter orange as well. Each whole Meyer lemon will make a delicious 3/4 cup carmelized marmelade, more orange flavored than lemon, and, nothing wasted.#CA2025

Here is our family farm marmelade recipe for sweet Blood Oranges, we make this in cup size jars, one jar for each month.First, we simmer fresh blood and navel oranges which contain 9-10% sugar into thick fruit compote, down to half the weight, which doubles the sugar to 18%.Next, to turn fruit compote into marmelade, you need more than 60% sugar contents. We now add 50% of the fruit compote weight in sugars and simmer longer, end up with 63%.

Such a pleasure, our Meyer Improved Lemon tree! We use the zest of twenty of the largest ripest fresh lemons to make this Limoncello liqueur starting in February. After pressing the juice out, the lemonpeels are scraped and immersed in vodka for a few months. The lemon juice is poured in quart mason jars or plastic bottles and frozen. By July, the lemon peel extract is ready, we make limoncello as dessert for hot summer evenings.

A short puree cook, a long puree bake, delicious organic Roma Tomato paste, just tomato, flaked seasalt and olive oil. No other preservatives used, kept fresh for a year refrigerated in a sterilized mason jar. Ten pounds of fresh Roma tomatoes make one pound of paste. To start, make quarter pound batches with 2 1/2 pounds of fresh tomatoes till you have perfected the flavor.#2025newyear “ Replace Store bought foods with home made organics”

Our jams and jellies use no sugar and less natural sweetener so we get more grape jelly flavor, by using agave nectar instead of sugar. Your supermarket sells agave nectar, about $2 a cup. The only other ingredients you need are Clear Jel and lemon juice. We use Oregon State University Clear Jel from Nichols Nursery, a modified natural corn starch product. Clear Jel stays liquid in cooking and canning, allowing heat to penetrate and sterilize the liquid jelly inside the jar. It turns into solid smooth jelly when cooled when you use lemon juice as stabilizer.

The richness of home made butter will amaze you. Two cups of sweet cream make one cup of butter in your kitchen mixer. And if you don’t have a cow handy, you just buy a pint of sweet cream in the store. You will also produce 2/3 cup of fresh buttermilk. Great to make Ranch Salad Dressing with. Recipes follow.