@grow_my_own how long ago were those raised beds created? I did the same thing when I lived in CA, and never had any trouble with the ground squirrels until they had been in place for about 15 years when suddenly, the ground squirrels were there. I remember watching an onion slowly disappear...
Made me remember the time my girlfriend found and bought an antique FarmAll... she towed it home using the only vehicle she had at the time- a brand new Chrysler, lol
there are numerous articles and ebooks online for making a cider press. I've heard a lot of good press for the Whiz Bang plans (among other things, it uses a garbage disposal unit to grind the apples before pressing). A friend of mine won a prize at the local fair for the one he built using...
Having lived through several (like 3 or 4) freezers dying, I no longer feel safe keeping lots of food in a freezer. The worst one was an enormous chest freezer the size of a sarcophagus-- We lost hundreds if not a thousand dollars worth of foods in that one. I also don't like freezer burned...
Crabapple liqueur is very very easy. I don't measure things much, but it's hard to go wrong. Take a quantity of crabapples and quarter them and drop them into a glass gallon jar if you have one (otherwise, any ceramic or glass receptacle of a good size will do). You want to have about 25% of...
Here's a good homemade version of the cream-style clam chowder
New England Clam Chowder
Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter (or 6-7 pieces of bacon, diced)
1 medium onion, finely diced
2 celery stalks (reserve tender leaves) trimmed, quartered lengthwise, then sliced into 1/4-inch pieces
3...
Crabapples are too tart for me to eat fresh; I use crabapples with regular apples in my applesauce- they add a snap, and a lovely rosy hue. I've also made spiced/pickled crabapples, and a wonderful crabapple liqueur.
I just tried making something called Rhode Island Clam Chowder, the family loved it. The delicate flavor of the clams comes through much better without dairy or tomato to cover it up:
2 oz. thin-sliced bacon (2 to 3 slices), cut crosswise into 1/4-inch strips
1-1/2 oz. unsalted butter (3...
LOL, My brother and I were the ones that cleaned up the mess, while mom yelled at her father in French. I think she was telling him to absolutely never do that again. I didn't get to taste snails until I was in my late teens. They sort of reminded me of clams, but garlicky.
My mother is French; and one year, her father came to visit us in California. He was very excited at the number and size of snails in the back yard and went out and caught a nice number of them. He put them in a pail with some cornmeal (you have to clean out their innards before you eat them...
People freak out at the thought of someone eating horse or donkey, but I suspect that was the original reason those animals were domesticated. It's all a matter of culture.
My mother lived on the island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean for 15 years and the way they cure olives there is to take the ripe, black olives and put them in a wooden box, slightly crushed so that there are cracks going all the way through to the pit, and then putting the box in the sea for a...