Prepped Living Blog

  Getting the Most out of Your Root  Vegetables: Using the Greens Did you know you can eat the greens to several root vegetables? Beets, radishes, turnips, rutabagas, and carrots all have edible greens. To get the most out of your root vegetables, don’t toss the greens! Instead, incorporate some of the ideas below to add variety to your meal planning and to ensure you get the most out of your root vegetables. Beet, Radish, Rutabaga, and Turnip Greens – These greens can all be used in the following ways. Boiled – We have served boiled beet greens at our house numerous times. Boil greens in water for 2 minutes. Strain water, splash with vinegar, salt, and pepper. Serve warm. Steamed – Steam greens in a steamer for 3 minutes. Season as above. Sautéed – We like to sauté these greens using the following recipe: Fry 4 to 6 strips of bacon, crumble, and set aside. Sauté 2 cloves of minced garlic in 2 T. butter or 1 T. of butter and 1 T. of bacon grease. Add in one bunch of gree

We do a lot of canning at our house. For one, I really enjoy it. Other reasons we do it include saving money, making healthy alternatives to store-bought food, having easy meals on the shelf, and having a full larder in case of hard times. If you are new to canning and are wondering what you need, here are a few essentials that we use consistently in preparing our canned goods.  Note: This blog post contains affiliate links. Purchasing through these links helps support our website and blog at no cost to you. Thank you for your support. Items you will likely need to get if you have never canned before: Presto Pressure Canner  - You can purchase a water bath canner and/or a pressure canner, but I prefer the pressure canner because it gives you more options. You can water bath can and pressure can using only one canner rather than having a separate canner for each purpose. This saves on shelf space. Furthermore, the pressure canner has a nice flat bottom rack, unlike the old water bath ca

This past week was a fruitful one on the prepping/canning front. It also exemplifies a typical week during harvest and canning season. Here is what it looked like: Note: This blog post contains affiliate links. Purchasing through these links helps support our website and blog at no cost to you. Thank you for your support. Monday On Monday, I had the opportunity to pick up some apples in town that a friend had. Since our eldest daughter is out-of-town, our youngest daughter and I made plans to try making apple juice with the steam juicer my mom handed down to me. It is a much older version of this one . My mom has made many different juices with this over the years, but the two I remember most are plum and grape. I have used these canned juices to drink, make jelly, make juice pops, and make homemade jello.  Tuesday The peaches we ordered arrived and on Tuesday I canned my first batch. A few were a bit green yet, but since I was going to the work of canning them, I wanted to be sure I

If you have spent time cooking in the kitchen, then you probably know how fast cooking a meal can heat up your home in the summertime. If you have an air conditioner, this rise in temperature can make the unit work harder and longer to offset the rise in heat.  With the price of electricity on the rise, this can really add to your monthly expense. For those without an air conditioner, the last thing you want to do is add to the heat of your home, especially when temperatures outside reach the 90s and 100s. C hoosing cooking methods that won't increase the ambient temperature of your home can be a help in either case. Here are some summertime meal ideas that won't heat up the house and will help conserve energy. Even better, some of these options will give you great prepper practice! Outdoor Cooking One of the best ways to avoid overheating your home is to cook outside. There are many options including outdoor grills, outdoor smokers, camp stoves, outdoor ovens, and even fire