I hope you all had a wonderful, peaceful Thanksgiving.
A few days ago, I went out to check on my sweet peppers and tomatoes and filled my apron with a bunch of each! I have some pepper and tomato plants in a couple of different locations. This one is a Southwest area which means it gets very little morning sun this time of year but is loving what it gets.
The sugar peas are starting to give me some edible pods. I am still getting cherries from the Barbados (Acerola) tree. And I still have lots of sweet potatoes and the occasional eggplant to harvest. I used the sweet potato leaves for a BLT last night, always fun. I add fresh basil leaves and a few sugar pea leaves to the "lettuce" portion of the sandwich and those gorgeous looking tomatoes. Yum.
Since cranberry sauce recipes usually start out with "a bag" of, I tweaked the recipe to accommodate whatever size bag you purchase. For each 4 ounces (by bag weight) you need 1/3 cup of water and 1/3 cup of sugar. Bring the water and sugar to a boil, stir until dissolved then add cranberries, reduce to a simmer, cover and WATCH, even at a simmer they sometimes want to boil over. And if you are as bad at multitasking as I am you need to monitor. :-) Simmer for about 8-10 minutes until all the berries have burst, stirring once in a while. The lovely thing about cranberries is how much pectin they naturally have.. They "want" to be a nice firm jam when cooled. I decided to use 4 ounce jars for canning from now on, as even the 8 oz can be too much all at once. Even refrigerated they can go bad if you have a guy like my guy who likes to have 4-6 types of jam available all the time.
Fun craft ideas from the Victorian Age. I have loved all of the BBC special "farm" series shows which each highlighted a farm time in history. This link is to a special craft page for creating Victorian type Christmas ideas from cards to decorations.
TOMORROW ---
I am posting with links to my 25 Days of Christmas - but wait there's more - and the 12 Days of Christmas!
I am The Herb Lady, so two years ago I decided to expand my research into the herbs of the Bible for the holidays and focused on 25 culinary herbs to create my version of the 25 days of Christmas - sort of an Herbal Advent Calendar. Be sure to watch for the blog post.
I also then created a post for each of the 12 Days of Christmas which traditionally does not start on December 1st but, in fact, starts with December 25th.
When you get the post you may want to bookmark it so you can come back to it whenever you want to check out "the day". I have a lot of information in each one.
Speaking of Herbs - check out my Herb Planting Chart for sale as a PDF in the side bar here on the blog. I have information on growing 48 different culinary herbs here in the desert southwest and USDA Zone 9b and above.
Have a best day in the garden and kitchen,
-- Catherine, The Herb Lady
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