Recipes

It’s sometimes hard to find fresh turmeric at the store and the supplements made from turmeric can be very expensive so we’ve turned to growing it at home

Container gardeners sometimes limit themselves to growing herbs, but once you harvest a crop of container-grown potatoes you’ll see that the sky’s the limit.

Chickpeas are packed with protein, carbohydrates and dietary fiber making them an excellent staple crop for folks trying to produce more of their own food…

We’ve been growing food for over a decade and are still trying out new things that catch our eye, but there are some old standbys we plant every year because they have proven themselves to be reliable and delicious. So here are some of our all time favorites; we hope you give them a try!

Salsa macha is very different from your typical jar of salsa in the grocery store. Think of it as an all-purpose condiment to drizzle on anything that needs some spice, tang, and crunch (and really, what doesn’t?)

Since we started growing corn, I’ve wanted to make tamales. I always associated them with holidays and big events and having never made them myself, assumed they were an intimidating and laborious process. But this year, our usual tamale source fell through and Jordan and I decided it was time to throw our hats in the ring.

We’re so excited to announce that our gardening course is officially available! In over 30 exclusive, detailed video lessons, we’ll walk you through how to produce your own high-quality food and really feed yourself from your garden!

Sneak Peek at Our Upcoming Gardening Course! UPDATE: Our course is now live! Buy it here for over 30 detailed, exclusive video lessons like the …

Scrapple is a Pennsylvania Dutch food borne out of the need to use absolutely every scrap of an animal after it is butchered to feed a family or community with very limited resources. It is essentially a congealed loaf of cooked and ground pork scraps, cornmeal and spices (hungry yet?). The loaf is typically sliced into quarter inch slabs and fried until the outside is crispy…

Shrubs are a great way to preserve fruit when you don’t have the time or energy for canning. It’s also suitable for fruit that’s a little past its prime that you wouldn’t want to can anyway. I often make shrubs with the tail ends of a fruit crop, or after a foraging trip where I managed to grab a few handfuls of berries but not enough for a major cooking project

I had never eaten a pierogi until I moved to Pittsburgh but as a major potato fan it was love at first bite. Around here people take them very seriously so I…

This is a sweet, savory, spicy dip from the city of Aleppo, Syria. As with most of our recipes we replaced many ingredients with items that can be grown or…

Curly dock (rumex crispus, although many dock species will work as well) seed is easily identifiable from mid-Summer through Fall by its tall spikes of rust-brown seeds. It is often growing in large patches near agricultural fields or other disturbed areas. By grabbing the plant at the base of the seed head and stripping the seeds off into a bag, it’s easy to collect a lot in a short amount of time.

We grew oats for the first time this year and this is the first recipe we came up with to taste test them. The homegrown oats have a nuttier flavor and…

Roughly 85% of Americans drink at least one caffeinated beverage per day, most of which are derived from two plants (the tea camelia and the coffee plant) originating in Asia and Africa. But did you know we have our own caffeinated plant that makes a delicious energizing beverage?

Because Silvan and I are striving to only use ingredients that we can produce ourselves, we are straying very far from the tradition of using lamb, burghul wheat and olive oil and instead making venison kibbeh…

If you’ve ever caught the unmistakable scent of honeysuckle wafting in on a breezy summer evening and thought- I wish I could capture that and eat it- this recipe is for you.

This rich, cheesy dip is a perfect way to use two common “weeds” in the garden that are at their peak in late Spring and early Summer.

Honey is a natural preservative due to its low moisture content, acidity and antibacterial properties. It’s been found in Ancient Egyptian tombs, unspoiled…

Ah nettle, one of foraging’s finest but most polarizing ambassadors. Nettle (urtica dioica) is incredibly nutritious, containing many vitamins and minerals such as Vitamins A and C, calcium, iron, and a rich array of fatty and amino acids. Stinging nettle has been used all over the globe as a source of food and medicine for centuries, and there’s substantial research backing up its numerous health benefits.

Working in a greenhouse and on a farm where they go from wet to dry, dirty to scrubbed clean, and bitterly cold to warm throughout the day, my hands go through Hell in the Spring and often look like it. Regular lotions don’t do much since they instantly get wiped or washed off, but I have found that a thick application of beeswax salve keeps the cracking at bay.

Venison borscht is a perfect dish for March- hearty and satisfying to warm you on those blustery early Spring days spent prepping the garden…

When I was a kid my mother always made pumpkin-cranberry muffins in the Fall so I associate them with changing leaves and cold mornings waiting for the school bus, but these sweet and richly satisfying muffins are good any time of year. A can of pumpkin puree from the store will do just fine for this recipe, but if you’re blessed with an abundance of pumpkins in your pantry like we are, making your own is very simple.

Wild cherries are one of our favorite fruits to forage and eat, but depending on the species they can have a somewhat sad fruit-to-pit ratio. Thankfully, you can turn those pits into another delicious ingredient. Using cherry pits as a flour and flavoring agent is a tradition in Native America, Middle Eastern, and Siberian cuisine.

As someone who was a vegetarian for most of my life until very recently, I still really appreciate a good veggie burger. Rather than thinking of them as substitutes trying to be something they’re not, I look at veggie burgers as a great way to creatively pack in a lot of vegetables into one dish and celebrate interesting flavors.

Hushpuppies are an unassuming food, but oh so satisfying. And for something so simple there are a million ways to make them, from sweet and cake-like to packed full of embellishments like onion and cheese. We like to focus on the cornmeal flavor to let our homegrown corn shine.

After pressing our American persimmons through a sieve to get seed-free pulp for our persimmon pudding recipe, we were left with a seedy, sticky mess that we definitely knew we could get more usable material out of. This recipe was an easy way to deal with the goop as we could just add liquid and then strain everything out, with an added bonus that it turned out delicious!

Living off the Land It’s a new year and with that comes the requisite writing resolutions and making plans for bettering ourselves. I’m not big …

These corn chips, which we’ve lovingly named “homegrown doritos,” are the perfect vehicle to highlight all the flavors we have stored in our pantry

Persimmon pudding is a dish that has been around for centuries that we’ve put our own spin on, adding chopped hickory nuts and using honey instead of sugar…