Refrigerator pickles are quite possibly the easiest pickle to make.They are, as the name suggests, pickles you keep in the refrigerator. I received the recipe from a family friend a few years ago and we have been making them each year since. Our children love them!
If you’ve never enjoyed home-canned peaches in the middle of winter, I urge you to try them. Nothing brings back the warm days of summer like the taste of a home-canned peach. Sure you can buy canned peaches in the supermarket, but I have yet to find one that comes close to those canned at home at the peak of ripeness.
Syrup from bark? What is this about? That was my first reaction when I came across a stand selling Shagbark Hickory Syrup at the Ned Smith Festival today. What I found was a small, local, husband and wife business that produced a sweet syrup from the bark of a Shagbark Hickory tree. Now they had my attention.
The one thing always growing in our garden during the summer is basil. We grow several different varieties of basil; sweet, large leaf Italian, and genovese. One thing we like to do with all our basil is make pesto. Pesto can be used on a variety of things: pasta, burgers, tuna, sandwiches, etc. We make enough throughout the summer to keep us supplied until next summer.
Today I took my first harvest from the garden. I harvested a few leaves of spinach and swiss chard from plants that I had started late last fall and kept under a cold frame all winter.
The spinach was very sweet. In fact, I never before had spinach that tasted that sweet. It is the Bloomsdale variety of spinach and it’s a keeper. The swiss chard was also very good.
I had plans to make a homemade white pizza for dinner, so I decided to add a little spinach and swiss chard to the white pizza. What a great addition.
I made a homemade white sauce for on the pizza with heavy cream, olive oil, onions, garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper. This was the first time I had made this sauce and it was great.
This was a great pizza, but then I never met a pizza I didn’t like.
Happy growing….
The Year Round Harvest 