Well hello there! It has been so long since I have posted! Life has been…well…challenging…but you know what the old saying is:
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” ~Elbert Hubbard
While I wade through these challenges and pray for guidance, I have the perfect post for this current theme in my life. Out of this surplus of challenges, I pray God will make something new, something better. Today at a Bible study, this verse was referenced:
““Then I will compensate you for the years That the swarming locust has eaten, The creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust— My great army which I sent among you.” Joel 2:25 NASB2020
If you would like to learn more about this book from the Old Testament of the Bible,here is a great summary.
I came home from the study and had an urge to make something out of my surplus. Not my surplus of challenges…that I will trust God will do. I have been going to this lovely food cooperative and bought lemon juice at an excellent price last month. This month, I purchased lime juice at a nice discount. I bought quite a few. I figured I would freeze some and use it for canning and to add to water with Himalayan salt and stevia for a lemonade with some electrolytes.
I enjoy lemon…lemon curd, lemon cake, Italian lemon cookies. In case you are wondering if I like lemon without sugar, no, not really. I also like a simple cup of warm water with lemon and honey when sick. I used to buy lemon curd at the store and have thought about making it a few times over the years. Today, my friends, was the day that I finally made lemon curd. I also made lime curd. They were both very yummy.
What is lemon curd? It is a lovely, simple, rich mixture that I love adding to an English muffin or toast. It is something between a jam and a custard. It is very much like a tart custard actually. This version only has 4 ingredients. Most recipes call for lemon zest but since I was trying to make something from my surplus, I made it without. I am sure it would add nice depth of flavor if you were making this from fresh lemons. The four ingredients are: LEMON JUICE, EGGS, SUGAR, & BUTTER. Who doesn’t love a simple recipe with only four ingredients?
For this recipe, BEFORE heating the pan, I started with adding 1 & 1/4cups SUGAR to a sauce pan. I then added 4 WHOLE EGGS and whisked them together.
Once the sugar and eggs were mixed well, I whisked in 1 & 1/3 cups LEMON JUICE.
Then, I put the pot on MEDIUM HIGH HEAT for about 5ish minutes or until it thickened to coat the back of a spoon while whisking continuously.
Once it reaches the right thickness, remove from heat and add 2 sticks of BUTTER, one TABLESPOON at a time while whisking. The mixture will go from bubbly and thick to silky. Once the butter is incorporated, add to containers and refrigerate or freeze.
For freezing, always leave headspace for expansion. You need to use straight jars for the freezer or the jars can bust during the expansion as the contents freeze. I love these little Kerr jars. They are 8 ounces, but are short and squatty compared to their taller counterparts. These are not only cute but functional. They stack so much nicer and more stable than others. This recipe is said to last about 1-2 weeks in the fridge and 6 months in the freezer. One batch made 6-eight ounce jars with proper headspace for freezing. I kept one jar in the fridge and froze the rest. Aside from lavishing English muffins, this curd can be used for many things…mini pies, centers of cookies, as a base for a glaze for fruit rolls, cake filling. Oh the possibilities…
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Coming Home to Eden is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com
Who doesn’t love strawberries? We eat fairly seasonally here so each new thing is exciting! We have planted strawberries in the past and have not had a great experience. Today, I will talk about how and why we grow strawberries the way we do now. Let’s go back in time shall we…it was 1973… just kidding. I wasn’t born yet. Okay, around 6 years ago we readied 3 long beds for strawberries. I marked them and my husband tilled and tilled and tilled. Our soil here is boney as they call it. That means there are lots of rocks. Some are very large. In these parts we need what is called a rear tine tiller. Our friends kindly lent us theirs. If you are not sure what a tiller does, it basically chops up the grass weeds and loosens the soil for planting. The rows were a couple of feet wide by I am not sure how long…maybe 30 or 40 feet? We planted a few different varieties. The strawberries filled in with weeds before long. We had mulched them with hay. That was a bad idea. Hay contains seeds and seeds sprout. It was a big fat mess. Besides the hay seeds and other seeds that are airborne that land and grow, there are some plant roots that are extremely hardy. Plants can grow back from the roots especially when growing with this method. We still keep one long bed (a different one) with strawberries directly in the ground. We have a couple of hundred berries in and around a bed with gooseberries, blueberries, and currants. We do mulch this bed with sawdust and wood chips but it still fills in pretty quickly with weeds. This bed was kind of an overflow area for extra strawberry plants. I figured they would be a good fit for around the other berries. We already mulched the row. It was easy to pop some plants in between the bushes. This bed is harder to maintain. The weeds not only come if from above but also below. They are spread everywhere by seed but also in a bed like this from underneath via roots. Every year we deal with this. Now if you are planting just one little bed of strawberries, it may be no big deal for you. If you happen to already have a large garden to tend, an orchard, animals, homeschool, etc…ease matters. There is only so much time in the day.
Last year we added 8 new raised beds around the perimeter of the garden for strawberries. This has been a nice amount of our family. This area tightly fit 200 plants. I crammed 25 plants in each bed. That was too tight and not necessary but I had a lot.
Strawberries make lots of babies via runners. These are little baby plants that grow from the main plants. So leaving room is better as they will fill in quickly with runners. Once your beds are filled you can pinch off runners and stick the nubby part into water and they will form roots. You can give these away or sell them. They produce A LOT of runners so I like to give them away but it would be a nice thing to do for a farmers market. Planting the runners after they are rooted for sale.
Considerations for planting: strawberry plants need a watering source. They do significantly better when watered on a regular basis. I have some that I cannot reach with my hose and they are kind of a we get what we get bed. They do not produce as well. Blueberries, gooseberries, and currants have done fine without watering here where we live. We have a lot of plants to tend and some are far from a water source. Since I can’t reach them with the hose, I heavily mulch them. I had planned to irrigate them eventually but sometimes things change.
Planting in a bed: you can use whatever you have available to you. You do not need to go out and buy beds unless you want to. You can make beds out of anything. They do well in full sun. You could plant them on the south facing side of your home. I prefer to utilize this space for figs since it is a very warm place and I have other spaces for berries. But the reason I mention planting along the house is for ease. The house acts as one side of the bed so you only need to build up the other sides. Depending on how you are going to make your beds, I recommend either weed whacking short and sheet mulching or taking up the sod over tilling.
Our beds were an experiment that turned out well. I sheet mulched by putting a wheel barrow or two of sawdust in the bottom on top of the barrier. Next we added chicken bedding with manure mixed in that had been in the coop over the winter. Not composted but ready to clean out from using the deep litter method over the winter. We put a wheel barrow or two of this in each bed next. Then we added compost to plant directly in. The stuff underneath will do a couple of things. It will hold moisture and it will break down over time and feed the plants. I wasn’t sure how this would work but it worked very well!
There is another reason to plant in a bed. Strawberry plants can be a pain to deal with in terms of life expectancy. Having to figure out a way to collect runners for new plants and swap them out is not something I wanted to deal with. Instead, every couple of years you can mulch them thickly and the strongest plants come up. A bed helps contain the mulch. You do not need a very deep bed. In fact too deep a bed with too high of walls can result in moldy berries from them not getting enough air flow.
You can make a bed out of anything you have. For around the house, we use rocks we gathered when digging holes for fruit trees. They were plentiful!
You can’t tell in this picture but, this is a bed of summer bearing raspberries. This is the same bed two years prior from a different angle. See what happens when we plant food! We get food!
So this bed is utilizing the house behind it. In this bed, my husband trimmed very short. We should have taken the sod off because there was an invasive plant beneath that has continued to push through. Next, we laid heavy cardboard and lined with rocks. Then we mulched thickly. When I planted, I pushed away the wood chips and put soil in that spot. This was for raspberries and elderberries. I don’t recommend this method for strawberries. They would need soil as I described above. You can see from the picture, it worked well.
In addition to lots of fresh eating, we froze a lot of strawberries this year. We also made fruit leather with applesauce and strawberries, crumbles, muffins, ice cream. In previous years I have made jam as well and sorbet.
Here is a pan muffin and crumble recipe I made this year. I just substituted the blackberries with strawberries. I use whole grain spelt flour in the muffin recipe. The cobbler recipe is grain free. If you want it paleo, you can substitute the butter with coconut oil with a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of nutritional yeast for a butter flavor.
Strawberry muffin bread & Strawberry crumble.
It was always a dream of mine to have my children be able to go outside and eat good food. And that, they do. We have planted food all over the place for that reason. Planting food is a small investment monetarily speaking. It definitely costs more in time and energy but look at what you get! Manufactured food is not grown for the same purpose. It is manufactured for profit. Where there is profit, there will not be the same thoughts in production. For example growing large quantities of food can mean using pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc to produce. Organic producers still use some but they have to be approved. The berries are picked and washed and packaged and shipped. There are a lot of things that can happen in that process. This year there was a hepatitis ”breakout” with organic strawberries. Kind of scary. I prefer growing my own hands down. Then I know every bit of what goes in and how they are processed. Things can happen at home too, but this gives me more control over my food supply.
Picking berries for breakfast after a rain in pajamas. Talk about fresh food!She had just picked a snack here of strawberries.
I started this post months ago when we were picking. Now it is almost fall and we have lots of runners so I can finish my post. This is the fun part. As I said before, strawberries produce a lot of babies. If you have a friend that has strawberries, ask for some runners! There is enough time now to grow the roots and plant them before winter so they can be established to make it through the winter.
In the center of this photograph is a little baby strawberry plant. You can see the nubs of roots beginning.
Here are a handful I pulled out to root. The one with the big roots had already planted itself in soil outside a bed. They like to spill out over the beds…like young adults trying to find their own way, lol. You can see the roots are at various stages.
I gathered the runners in my hand so that the roots were all together and put them in water. These will not take long to root. I will update when they have enough roots to plant. Before I ripped these young-ins away from their mothers, momma was feeding them from her roots. Placing them in water helps their roots to grow prior to planting. If you have your own strawberries already you can ”catch” these guys buy putting a container with soil underneath it and setting the root nubs on top. It will establish roots with very little effort from you. Once it has done so, you cut the line from the mother, and plant where you want it or give away.
Now, go get yourself some runners! They are free if you have a friend with strawberries that is willing to share. One main reason for this post is for folks I will be giving away runners to. You only need a temporary place to plant them in the ground once they root. You can mulch them for the winter and move them once they wake up in the spring. So, you do not need a bed ready right now if that is your chosen method. I do recommend planting them in the ground as soon as possible so they can spread out before the ground freezes. At the peak of picking, we were getting about 16 cups a day this year. That was a huge blessing for our family. We planted these last year. That is a great turn around if you ask me. We were picking a few times a day last year in small quantities for snacks…the same year we planted! We do NOT pick flowers off our plants the first year. We have way too many to do that. Besides, we ate the berries instead 😉 They were delicious. I hope I have inspired you to plant some strawberries! Cheers!
Hello! This will be another quick post. I have recently started making yogurt again after a break. With that yogurt I can make peanut butter popsicles! My children love these. Okay…we all love these! They are super simple and require only a few ingredients. Actual individual ingredients. It always drove me nuts looking for recipes online to find ingredients with ingredients when I was trying to look for simple recipes that were decently healthy. Now, I am not calling this healthy but it is simple and not full of additives.
Folks looking for an exact recipe, hold on to your seats! This will not be that! I do not measure, but I will give you an idea. The ingredients I use are peanut butter, plain yogurt, maple syrup and a pinch or two of salt. I make my own peanut butter and do not add salt which is why I add it in the recipe. If you are using peanut butter that is salted, omit the salt.
I use approximately 1 quart of plain yogurt, around a cup of peanut butter, and pure maple syrup to taste plus a pinch or two of salt for depth of flavor. I blend these up in my blender. That is the first part. One you blend that up, pour it into a popsicle mold but do not fill to the top. The recipe gets yummier in a moment when we make what I call peanut butter caramel.
Okay, on to the caramel! This is also super simple. Take about a cup of peanut butter and add some maple syrup to taste plus a pinch or two of salt if using plain peanut butter. Mix these up and add blobs to the already filled mold. This is why you needed to leave some space. Also freezing does expand the liquid contents.
Sorry for the fuzzy photo. I didn’t see that it came out that way until it was too late to retake. I used it anyway because I wanted to show you what it looks like! Next, put the top on the mold and add popsicle sticks. Lastly, put them in the freezer. It is that simple!
I had left over mixtures so added them to my favorite Kerr jars for individual ice creams and sorbets. I also love these for jams and jellies. They are short and squatty which makes them easier to stack on shelves. I will provide a link below for everything I used here. Don’t forget to leave space for expansion when using glass in the freezer. You also need to use straight jars. Not doing so can result in broken glass and wasted food.
The fuzzy pictures were from the way I angled the camera with the sunlight apparently. Here is what I had left over using these 8 ounce jars. I put lids on them and popped them in the freezer. Done! Nut butters make fantastic ice cream bases because of the fat content. They make ice cream rich and creamy. They are also a nice source of protein. I hope you enjoy this recipe!
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Coming Home to Eden is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com
I have been dehydrating a lot and wanted to share a bit on the process. I prefer a dehydrator to hanging herbs. The idea of dust collecting on them is off putting to me though that can be avoided. You can do a lot with a dehydrator. It is a great tool to have on a homestead. This season so far, I have used it for dehydrating parsley, rose petals, chamomile, thyme, dill, and fruit leather. I use my dehydrator year round. One of my favorite things to make in it is yogurt. My dehydrator (Excalibur) can fit 9 half gallon glass ball jars of yogurt to incubate. It stays on the counter as a kitchen staple in our home.
Parsley pulled off the stalk after dehydrating but not crushed. The leaves are left whole mostly. When I use them, I smash them in between my hands easily. They keep nicely fresh this way. I filled a half gallon jar with an almost full dehydrator. I use a lot of parsley. I will be dehydrating more.
I keep it simple. Some tips: don’t chop up your light herbs prior to dehydrating. If you do, they will end up all over the dehydrator from the the fan blowing. Wait until they are dry, then pull the leaves off the stalk in the case of parsley, dill, cilantro, thyme etc. Chives I harvest long, dehydrate, then toss in a jar. I leave what I can whole and break them up as I use them to retain freshness.
I use parsley a lot so am happy to fill the dehydrator with it. I use to buy it by the pound from Mountain Rose Herbs. If you cannot grow your own, I highly recommend theirs. The quality is excellent. Parsley is however easy to grow. If you have not done so yet, head on over to a good seed source like Baker Creek and get yourself a pack of seeds. Don’t forget to leave one plant to go to seed and you will really get your moneys worth out of that one packet of seeds! This entire bed seeded itself. It made an otherwise difficult year easy for my family. It really doesn’t have to be hard folks!
Rosa Rugosa Alba
I dehydrate rose petals for tea. Rosa Rugosa Alba is a lovely addition to the homestead. They produce nice sized hips which are a good source of vitamin C. They are however invasive so do be careful of where you plant them. These can be a great natural barbwire fence in the form of a hedge or under windows as a ”pest” deterrent. Both human and animal alike would not enjoy a tangle with this bush. She is sharp indeed and doesn’t mess around! I love the alba (white) variety as it has a very subtle soft pink tint to it which can really be seen in the dried state pictured above. Also, if you haven’t made rose petal jelly yet, I highly recommend it! It is delicious!
Chamomile
Certain varieties of chamomile are perennials here in our zone 4-5 climate. If you need a little calm once in a while like me…grow some chamomile. In fact, I could use a cup right now! I love growing perennials. You only have to plant them once and they keep giving as long as they live. You can’t beat that! I started a couple different varieties by seed. I harvest them fresh for tea too but I have more than I can use fresh. I also want to preserve them to use throughout the year. Dehydrating allows me that luxury. I use a sheet below my chamomile especially when dehydrating with other things because they have little tiny parts that with fall below the tray otherwise. If you are doing all chamomile, it doesn’t really matter.
Strawberries…oh lovely strawberries! We grow Cavendish strawberries here. They are cold hardy and long lived. We really enjoy these berries. They are an early to mid season variety. They have been plentiful for us. Once the novelty of eating something new wears off, you start to preserve. We are still eating them fresh but grow enough to put up to enjoy throughout the year. After we made strawberry ice cream and strawberries over angel food cake, we started freezing some. We have oodles of applesauce from last fall so took about half a jar (quart) to an equal amount of berries plus a little maple syrup or cane sugar and blended. Once blended, pour on lipped mats. These are much better than the flat sheets for leather. They give the leather a nice chew because of the thickness.
Here we have dill. I use dill in different dips, dressings and preserves such as pickles. This lovely herb reseeded itself with no work from me. Are you starting to see how simple this can be? I hope so. There is something so wonderful about using something that you grew and processed. It is a beautiful experience.
These pictures are from a previous season but I wanted to include them because it is one of my favorite ways to preserve tomatoes. I dehydrate these until they are thoroughly dry then store in jars after they are cool. As needed I dip using tongs into balsamic or apple cider vinegar then place in olive oil and let them absorb the oil for a couple of days before using. These are fabulous. I prefer balsamic vinegar over apple cider but both are good. I use extra virgin olive oil. I think these taste so good…much better than fresh tomatoes do in salads or on sandwiches. Don’t get me wrong, I love regular old fresh tomatoes, but the depth of flavor is fantastic in these yummy treats. They can be made as needed through the year. I make a pint at a time. They sit right on my counter since they get used up in a short amount of time. You do have to be careful when preparing them in this way. You do not want bacteria growing in there. I use tongs to remove them from the jar. Below is a last harvest before a frost. This is a big table. She gets covered with lots of food over the summer for processing!
Here we have thyme. Another wonderful perennial where we live in zone 4-5. I have planted this all around edges as a lower growing herb that can get mowed over and keeps kicking! I enjoy thyme in my food as well so love having it around. It has many good uses medicinally too.
Well folks, there is a bit on dehydrating. These are the ways that I use a dehydrator currently. There are many other uses. You can make jerky and crackers and all sorts of things. I love this dehydrator because it has a thermostat and a timer with an automatic shut off. What does that mean? You can set it and walk away or go to bed. In my opinion this type of dehydrator is much more efficient that the stackable types. I have used both and they do not compare. The Excalibur design dries much more evenly. I do still rotate the trays depending on what I am drying but find it to be a great addition to our homestead! I can make a post on making yogurt in there another time. Below are the exact tools I personally use and recommend. I hope I have inspired you to add dehydrating to your homestead! Enjoy!
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Coming Home to Eden is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com
Okay folks…going to get a little naughty here. I have had a little trouble with sugar over the years. It is my addiction. Some folks drink and do drugs…I like me some sugar. Pizzelles are one of my weak spots. I love them. There will be many other posts on healthy life choices I promise. In this post, I will honor my paternal grandmother Rose. I debated on sharing this recipe because I am Italian and we are kind of funny about those things. I wanted it to be special for my girls. However, here I am sharing it with the world. I thought my family would really like this one. I have altered the recipe anyway.
This is my grandma Rose with her two oldest children. The year was…a long time ago. I am unsure on that one.
My grandma Rose lived in the house I grew up in, in Syracuse, NY. She moved south to Florida and my parents took over the house at some point. I didn’t see her often but she used to send us the most delicious grapefruits which she grew in her back yard. I didn’t care for the oranges. Sorry grandma, they were too sweet for my taste. Those grapefruits however were amazing. Growing up in NYS you don’t get to sample many varieties of grapefruits. You get white and pink from the grocery store. The white ones were bitter. Grandmas were so different. They were thin skinned, tart and delicious. They were not bitter at all. Oh how I wish I knew what variety they were. If you know me, you know I am an investigator type. I even looked up the house grandma lived in (she has passed several years ago) to see if I could contact the new owners to get some seeds or a cutting. To my utter dismay someone cut down the trees and put in a pool.
When I was a kid, I remember visiting grandma in Florida. She would make me lots and lots of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice…as much as I would like. She also made me pizzelles. By chance you do not know what pizzelles are, they are a bland, crisp Italian cookie made with a press or pizzelle iron. They are delicious to me and my family.
Grandma Rose was a spunky little petite lady full of life. She was always working on something. I remember her as an older lady sitting outside our second story windows to clean them. She wasn’t afraid to tell you her opinion either. While I didn’t get her petite size…okay, I got the petite height…just not the width, lol…I have plenty of her spice. I also continue on her tradition of making pizzelles for my family.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Coming Home to Eden is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com
I got this new cookbook about 4 years ago with plastic slide in sheets to protect the recipes. I really like it. I hope it keeps the recipes I use safe for my girls and maybe their children one day.
Excuse my spelling errors and pen over pencil 😉
My variation: I use whole ground organic unbleached spelt flour. I get that locally through Regional Access. The Grindstone Farm picks up there. I use avocado oil in place of the butter from Aldi and add in 2 Tablespoons of nutritional yeast and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt. This combination gives a nice buttery flavor without the dairy. I prefer 2 teaspoons of almond extract instead of the anise & vanilla. I get my extracts from my local co-op most of the time. Sometimes I toss in some flax meal too. My batter is dark because I use unbleached ingredients. Some notes: Do not use extra virgin olive oil…it does not taste good in this recipe. The flavor is too strong. Regular olive oil is fine. Coconut oil isn’t my favorite in this recipe. They tend to brown too fast. DO NOT WALK AWAY while using the iron. They cook very quickly. I overcook a few just about every time because I try to multitask. Don’t do the dishes 😉 Wait.
I have the Chef’s Choice Pizzelle Pro maker. I make these for the kids birthdays, road trips, etc. Or just because… but I am trying not to do that these days!
This dough was made with sifted spelt flour. You can see there is a big difference in color.
You can use a stand mixer if you want but I generally use a batter bowl and a whisk. They whip up fine that way. I do love to use cooling racks. I use these things for everything. You will see them in many posts from basic food uses to holding sterilized canning jars to curing soap, lol. I prefer the stackable. I like Pampered Chef the best as they have a smaller grate pattern so you don’t tend to loose as much food but the first ones I linked work well for most things.
Pizzelles cool and harden quickly. You can shape them if you work fast…and don’t mind burning your hands! You can use them as an easy canolli shell (I use a fat stubby piece of dowel) or make cones out of them.
These dress up a table nicely in a long skinny basket. I hope I have inspired you to make pizzelles for your family! Enjoy! Once in a while that is…and maybe think of my grandma and smile.
Apples. What do we think of when we think of apples? I think of cool crisp Autumn days. Fireplaces ablaze to take the chill off. The smell of smoke in the air. And in our home, the sweet, heavenly scent of apples fragrant fruit wafts throughout the house as we preserve the bounty.
We make and can lots of sauce with the apples. We also make and can apple pie filling. We freeze apple crisp filling too. We make apple pie jam. With the sauce we often make apple leather. This allows us to enjoy those delicious apples year round in many ways!
I like to roast my apples for sauce. In my opinion, the flavor is much better than that of steaming them. The sugar concentrates and the sauce has a wonderful flavor. I do not add anything to my sauce. It is delicious as is. These beautiful red fleshed apples are Almatas. This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Coming Home to Eden is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com
After roasting until soft as you see here, I run the apples through my Kitchen Aid mill. The mill makes light work of making sauce. All I do is wash and half or quarter the apples and roast them. The mill spits out the skins and seeds. This attachment is actually called a Fruit & Vegetable Strainer. I do use the wide tray too. I have used this set up for more than a decade. From this point I either can my sauce in a water bath canneror make leather. We ALWAYS have some fresh off the mill. It always tastes SO good that way!
My kids love fruit leather. I always make apple leather during apple season. It is a great way to take applesauce on the road! I love my Excalibur dehydrator. I have used mine for so many things since 2014. For leather you will need sheets in your dehydrator.
I like to can sauce in quarts and pints for our family of four living at home. Apple pie filling in pints and jam in 8 ounce jars. I love the seeing my pantry fill with food for the year! Happy preserving!
