Posts under ‘equipment’

I am failing miserably at fermenting cabbage and I don’t know why. I believe I followed the instructions that came with my Fermented Vegetable Master from Cultures for Health. It’s been 11 days, yet there’s no bubbling action; No activity whatsoever. I was really looking forward to this. My garlic scapes didn’t work out like [...]

I bought a dehydrator simply to make yogurt. Sure, I told myself at the time, I could dry berries and cherries and make healthy chips out of root vegetables. But the main driver was that I needed a reliable incubator for my yogurt and that was all. Sure, I’ve tried a few vegetable experiments, previously [...]

When I started this local eating thing, I had no intention of puttin’ food by (storing it either by canning, freezing, drying, or some other method). I was to be a grasshopper, patron of the ants of the world. It turns out that there are not enough ants to feed locavore grasshoppers. While we made [...]

My biggest barrier to making my own raw milk yogurt was in finding a reliable low-heat source. My electric oven does not have a pilot and the light bulb lights intermittently. With the arrival of my Excalibur Dehydrator, I am ready to go! I do like the organic local Hawthorne Valley yogurt as well as [...]

To save my precious applesauce, pureed pumpkins, pumpkin soup, and various other locally produced and personally processed items, I purchased a FoodSaver home vacuum-packaging system. It sucks out the air and seals the bag. I have beautiful blocks of frozen fare in my freezer!

I know I said I wasn’t going to be “puttting by” foods; that I wanted to get my foods already prepared, just local, sustainable, and as organic as possible. So much for what I said. I live in Connecticut and I come from New York. We make the best apples in the world in this [...]