Prepped Living Blog

Hello, Everyone! Our girls and I went peach picking with a friend late last week and have been busy canning.  The girls made regular canned peaches while we canned peach pie jam, peach salsa, and peach barbecue sauce. The peach pie jam is a favorite of our family. The peach salsa was a new recipe we tried this year. It was fabulous. We will definitely be adding this one to our recipe box! The peach barbecue sauce is tasty and I am happy to add variety to our pantry, but it wasn't as big a hit with the family as was the salsa. I may keep an eye out for a different recipe to try next year.      Speaking of canning barbecue sauce recipes, I put up a new article on the website titled   "Canning Sauces - Why it is a good idea ." I also put up an article titled "Why Grow and Forage Herbs?" . Head over to the website to check it out. What projects have you been working on this week? Let me know in the comment section! Have a great week!

As I have delved a bit more each year into local edibles, I have discovered an assortment of edible flowers.  Of course, we dry various herbs and flowers for tea, but there are those that are good for eating as well. What is so great about edible flowers?  These can add beauty to your garden while still being practical in that they are a source of food - a win-win for any survival situation. Some of these I have mentioned in previous posts, but for ease of reference, I am listing them again here. Here is a short list of blossoms we have tasted: Oxeye Daisy - These flowers are fabulous for adapting to the flavor of whatever dish you are preparing. We first tried these battered and fried.  While prepared this way they didn't seem to have a strong flavor of their own. Nevertheless, we enjoyed eating them both with a savory and with a semi-sweet batter. One of my good friends and favorite foragers, Mary Banducci, has a paleo-friendly daisy fritter recipe on her page. Click...

 Is anyone else wondering how it is already August? And not just the beginning of August, but we are already over a week in!  Perhaps it is my age, but time seems to fly by faster and faster each year. We had a beautiful Tuesday morning this week - cool weather with mist rising over the lake. It was definitely one of those mornings when I would like to be sitting on the porch enjoying the fresh air for a spell. Instead, I watered the garden and then drove to pick up my order of pickling cucumbers. I had a lovely visit with a dear friend, then returned home for work and followed that with the first round of pickle canning. We had a last-minute dinner invitation, so the boys helped me finish up the pickles so my husband and I could drive into town for dinner. Plans for the remainder of the week: finish pickling the cucumbers and pick blueberries to freeze.