Without fail, I make this every year when small strawberries go on sale, This simple recipe that uses only 3 ingredients has been in our family for a long time! Even though it's easy, it gets great mileage. We use it on bread, scones, and in sweets.The key to maintaining the fresh red color is to simmer it on medium heat for a short amount of time. Please be sure to carefully remove the scum. It makes all the difference in the result. Recipe by Toiroiro

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.

When garden spices, seeds and herbs ripen, we pick and hang them to dry. Keep them dried in a small plastic bag with a label and year. Combine them into pickling spices and other spice mixes when the last ones are ready, usually the red peppers. We purchase some spices, mix them together to use till next harvest.

Before the first night frost comes in November, time to process all the garden tomatoes, ripe or not. A pound of tomatoes make a pint of puree. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar per pint keeps botulism out. The green tomatoes take longer to peel, then are cored, roasted, pureed and simmered. The red hard ones and red ripe soft ones are peeled, cored, pureed, then roasted and simmered. The over ripe ones are washed, quartered and sundried and stored in olive oil. We expect the next tomato harvest in June, 32 weeks from now, so I freeze 64 pints of puree, the basis for tomato soup, tomato sauces, tomato paste, salsa verde, and ketchup. They take little space in the freezer when stored in quart bags laid flat and frozen.

When the winter carrots are at their juiciest, we pickle them for use throughout the year till the next harvest. Here is the family recipe.

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.

This is a foolproof farm method to make green as well as black preserved olives, not salty, from the same fresh green local Sevillano olives, grown right here. We make five buckets of five lbs. each, taste one olive once a month till they develop their flavor over the time span of a year till next October harvest. You can use tall plastic food containers with lids, keep the proportions the same, to make smaller quantities.

This is a very old family farm recipe to make a delicious meatmix called Spam that is used instead of meat. The special spice is medieval. It is called “nailgrit and rattlespice”. I replicated it in here from fresh ingredients.When a piece the size of a breadslice is fried in a pan, it develops a crispy crust with a soft meaty filling. Enough is made for the whole year when a hog is slaughtered in winter, packed in breadloaf pans till cooled, and cut to bread slice size. Individual slices wrapped and frozen, stays fresh till next winter.I ran out already this August, so I made 24 more pounds from an eight pound pork picnic shoulder. This recipe scales down well, so you can start with one pound of well marbled pork till your spam is perfect for you.

Lemon curd is made with fresh eggs, fresh lemons and ghee made from unsalted butter, and fresh agave nectar as sugar substitute. It can be kept for a year in the freezer, till the next lemon harvest.We make it in small jars, 1 cup size. Once opened, it stays fresh in the fridge for 2 weeks if using butter, 4 weeks if using ghee, therefore the small jars.

Our chickens are laying lots of eggs this time of year, but in another month, they stop laying till days get longer again. We coat their egg shells with soy bean oil so they stay fresh one more month, but then have to wait for eggs till hens start laying again.You dont have to wait. You can pickle eggs in the shell without peeling. See recipe below.Pickled eggs bridge the eggless winter period and are great in winter salads. They stay fresh for two months. The red beet colored eggs brighten salads, the yellow eggs spice up curries, the brown soy sauce eggs complement asian dishes.#GlobalApron

You can make apple cider vinegar “with the mother” from apple juice in 3 weeks, add more juice every 3 weeks, let it ferment all year from apple harvest to apple harvest, while using it. Out of season, you can use frozen apple juice.The vinegar mother is the culture of acetic bacteria that ferments apple juice to vinegar. You can see it, it is the grey film in the fermenting juice.We have a little tabletop press to make apple juice, but you don’t need one, following the recipe of cookpad member Nadia from Turkey, immersing fresh apples in distilled water for six months and adding raw vinegar.

#newyear2025 “ Replace store-bought foods with home made organics”Every year, Heinz Ketchup wins national taste tests with their traditional tomato ketchup, even against organic tomato ketchups, their own organic ketchup included.Our home made organic ketchup replaces their fructose sugar with wildflower honey.I use 3 pounds of organic Roma tomatoes to make 2 pounds of ketchup. I cannot quite get the same red color because I remove the tomato skins and seeds. But the home made ketchup is tasty.Do your own taste test. Buy a bottle of store bought Heinz ketchup and compare the taste every month.