Happy Mother’s Day! Jammin’ With My Mom

Spring strawberries are in season in middle Tennessee.  Friday my sous-chef dish-washing mom and I made a trip to a local farm to fill up on fresh, ruby-red, stunningly juicy, beautiful strawberries. Mom cleaned the strawberries as I made dinner Friday. We talked about our “plan of attack” on Saturday morning to turn these berries … Read more

Preserved Figs

best preserved figs

I didn’t grow up eating figs, well, except for Fig Newtons, you’re darn tootin!  If you weren’t lucky enough to have a fig tree or two growing in your yard then this little bloggin’ about figs will probably relate to you.  Here’s my figs story and an easy preserved figs recipe. For me, figs are … Read more

DIY Homemade Dill Pickles

My Chief gardener started bringing lettuce from the garden a couple of weeks ago.  This past week he brought in the first basket full of yellow squash and cucumbers.  Today, I received my second BIG basket of cucumbers.  It is time to start pickling! Last summer our cucumbers caught a nasty bug and died on … Read more

Crispy Cucumber Freezer Pickles

When my neighbor, Kathy, called and asked me for a good freezer pickle recipe I said, “can you freeze pickles?” She laughed and said “I hope so! I have waaaay too many cucumbers but I don’t want to can them.”  Okay. Freezer pickles. I began searching for recipes and much to my surprise — I … Read more

Weekend RoundUP July 21 and My Ball Blue Book


Last summer my friend Sue convinced me that I shouldn’t go through another canning season without a Victorio Food Strainer. At first I didn’t even understand what she was talking about. I don’t have a technical mind and in no way could even fathom how this works,  let alone design something like this. But my hands, that is another story — they love this Victorio!  I don’t have a food allergy to tomatoes but my hands really break out when I cut them up and process them.  With the Victorio my handling of fruits and vegetables is much less. 

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