How to Brew Your Own Apple Vinegar

Making your own apple vinegar is a very satisfying city farming project because: It makes magical use of waste scraps of fruit – rather than throwing them away It produces a useful, expensive-to-buy product that is great for food flavoring, home remedies and for cleaning (See my recipe for homemade citrus-infused all-purpose cleanser) Since this […]

Adventures in Olive Picking and Pressing

Recently, here in Israel we were blessed with the first rains of the winter. You know what that means, right? It’s Olive Picking Season! Over the past two weeks, I spent five mornings picking olives and pressing olive oil in a picturesque ancient olive grove on a hillside right outside my hometown of Beit Shemesh. […]

How I Made Homegrown Crushed Tomatoes – And Will I Ever Do it Again?

We eat a lot of tomatoes in our family but very few of them fresh. Usually they take the form of canned crushed tomatoes or tomato paste (and, of course, ketchup). Tomatoes are so easy to grow but I never grew many of them because processing them myself seemed so daunting. Last week I was […]

Homemade Fruit Leather: You MUST try this!

If you only try one food preservation project this year – this is the one! It’s ridiculously simple, requires no special equipment and you will be amazed by the scrumptious results! Homemade Fruit Leather Recipe Ingredients: 1 kg of summer fruits – eg. plums, peaches, mango, nectarines. A mix is best. Add a bit of […]

The absolute easiest way to preserve your lemon harvest

Every year in this season, life gives us lemons But how can we preserve the bounty so we can freshly squeeze them all year long? By Pesach the season will fade! Here’s the simplest, most effective way: Just pick ’em and stick them in the freezer whole. When they defrost, they are a bit mushy […]