How to Freeze and Eat Swiss Chard

Every year we have an abundance of Swiss chard in our garden and freezing it is a great way to preserve it to use all year round.

Bread and butter refrigerator zucchini pickles

Sweet and tangy refrigerator pickles made from zucchini are a perfect way to enjoy the summer squash bounty!

Quick pickled red onions

Tangy, sweet, spicy, and crunchy, these quick pickled red onions add a burst of flavor to tacos, burritos, salads, and more. 

Hot and spicy refrigerator turnip pickles

Hot, spicy, tangy, and delicious -- these refrigerator turnip pickles add terrific flavor to any meal or relish tray!

How to freeze basil in olive oil

Save your garden basil to use all year round by freezing it in olive oil. This method blends up the basil leaves and freezes it in ice cubes to preserve the fresh basil flavor to enjoy even in winter.

Slow cooker cranberry apple butter

Smooth and tangy and lightly spiced cranberry apple butter is cooked in the slow cooker and then stored in freezer containers to use throughout the year. It's perfect on biscuits, toast, sourdough bread, swirled into oatmeal, and more.

Small batch rhubarb jam

Thick, sweet, and full of that sour-tangy rhubarb flavor, this simple rhubarb jam requires only rhubarb, sugar, and water. It's a delicious jam for sandwiches, biscuits, crackers, and more.

18 Vegetable and Fruit Quick Pickles

Photos courtesy of Culinary Adventures with Camilla, A Day in the Life on the Farm, Books n' Cooks, and Yum Goggle.

Quick pickles, or refrigerator pickles, are a simple way to make homemade pickles in a small batch and to extend the life of some of your summer and fall produce.

Quick pickled radishes

Bright, colorful, and crisp, these quick pickled radishes are an easy way to liven up any salad or sandwich. And, aside from adding lovely color to a relish tray, they would even be terrific in a burrito or a taco.

Oven roasted apple butter

Disclosure: This post is sponsored on behalf of #appleweek. Our generous sponsors, Swiss Diamond, Envy Apples, Imperial Sugar, Nordic Ware, Rodelle Vanilla, Flahavan's Irish Oatmeal, Nairn's and The Spice House have provided us with products for recipe creation and a giveaway for our readers. As always, all opinions are my own.

 

Apple butter is taken to another level when you slow roast it in the oven. The apple flavor condenses and you get a hint of a caramelized flavor for the most amazing and deeply apple-y apple butter! 

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This is my first recipe for #AppleWeek! I'm so excited to join this event this year because as my readers know I have a bit of an apple obsession. Stay tuned all week for bushels of fabulous apple recipes! 

This apple butter was made in this Swiss Diamond XD Nonstick Roasting Pan. I am so excited to be able to add this roasting pan to my cookware collection. According to Swiss Diamond's website, their XD coating features not only a new nonstick diamond-reinforced coating formulation, but also an advanced PFOA-free and eco-friendly production process. 

The apple butter in this recipe reduces down a lot of leaves apple residue on your pan, but clean-up was so simple - just soapy water and a sponge and it wiped right off. This roasting pan is going to be perfect for our family all year round for making roasts, chicken, and even casseroles. Don't forget to enter to win one of the awesome prizes from our sponsors!

I lightly spiced this apple butter to really highlight the apple flavor and not overwhelm it with too much spice. I also did not add any sugar as I used sweet apples. If you use more tart apples, or want a sweeter product, feel free to add some brown sugar to the recipe after it is pureed. This recipe will make about 2-1/2 cups of finished apple butter. 

I left one small jar in my refrigerator and froze another two jars for later. Any sweet apple will do in this recipe. I used Gala apples and left them unpeeled for even more apple flavor, but you can peel them for an extra smooth apple butter. 

I like my apple butter spread onto biscuits or toast, or even used to make apple butter oatmeal muffins.

Candied watermelon rind

Candied watermelon rind is a fun treat and a terrific way to use some of your food scraps and turn them into something you'd want to eat!

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Watermelon rind is edible, though not especially tasty raw. My kids are watermelon monsters, so I buy one almost every week in the summer, leaving us with A LOT of rinds to compost or throw away.

I always enjoy coming up with ways to use up foods that otherwise may be tossed. Things like making pestos from some greens (like the tops of carrots or radishes), eating beet greens, making broths and stocks with the tops of celery and onion peels. These are all great ways to reduce food waste.

The process to candy the rind takes about 4 days, but most of the time is completely hands-off. I scaled up the recipe to make more and I added some drying time in the direct sunlight. 

It's an imperfect process that you have to play by ear; a dehydrator may be helpful here and cut down on drying time, but mine turned out delicious without one! If you use a dehydrator, just keep checking them to see when they've reached the dry and chewy state.

Candied watermelon rind is similar to other candied rinds like oranges, lemon, and grapefruits. Watermelon rind is bland in flavor - it does not taste like watermelon. The lemon in this recipe adds the flavoring to the end product.

You can use other flavors if you prefer - lime or ginger would be great ones to try in this recipe if you don't want to use lemon, or don't like lemon flavor.

These are a fun and tasty treat to eat out of hand for a few days - they are almost like a fruit snack in a way. Their shape and texture also remind me of a gummy worm - sweet, a little tart, and a touch chewy. We eat them out of hand, but you can use them to decorate the tops of cupcakes or other treats as well. 

When your are planning to make watermelon rind candy, I suggest using rinds from watermelon that you have cut up into a fruit salad or similar. You don't want to collect up ones that people have been touching and eating from with their mouths. Remove the fruit from the rind with a knife and then use that rind for making candy. 

Give this watermelon rind candy a try this summer and reduce your food waste and the same time! 

Salted preserved lemons

I've declared 2014 the year of fermentation! I've tried my hand at sauerkraut and received The Art of Fermentation for Christmas, so I'm slowly building my knowledge and experience in this technique. Salted preserved lemons are something I have been wanting to try for a while. 

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I have never actually eaten them before, but after learning about them, they stuck in my head. I love Moroccan spices, so I've been imagining the wonderful flavor that these lemons will impart to couscous, tagines, and much more. I'm super excited for them to finish their fermenting and curing process so I can give them a try!

Citrus is in season now, so it's time to get a jar of these going. They will take about 4-6 weeks to be ready to eat, but will last for a year or more in the refrigerator. 

You eat the rind, so you'll want to get organic lemons. I used regular lemons, but many people recommend Meyer lemons. There are tons of "recipes" for preserved lemons out there and as far as I can tell, there's no prescribed amount of salt - it seems to range from 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup per quart jar. For this recipe, I used a little under 1/3 cup of sea salt and 7 organic lemons.

Sauerkraut two ways

Homemade sauerkraut can be made in small batches using a Mason jar and a few other items.

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I tried a couple batches of sauerkraut this fall and recently pulled them out of the back of the fridge to give them a smell and taste. They are good, and definitely have a funk that you expect from ferments and sauerkraut. I think that I still have a way to go before "perfecting" my ferments though. 

I'm finding that so much depends on the temperature when you start the ferment. You need to check it to make sure it's still bubbling and that it's not getting too warm (should be room temperature). I have used the recipes in Nourishing Traditions as a baseline for making my sauerkraut. These recipes make one quart and use 1 medium head of cabbage to two tablespoons of sea salt. 

It can come out a bit salty and I'm hoping to find ways to use less -- you definitely don't want to use a super fine grain salt, it will be too much. I discovered that you can use reCAP Mason jar lids to turn a Mason jar into a fermenting crock (find instructions here). 

It's great! Plus when you finish the fermenting process, you can use them to cover the jars in your fridge, or replace them with a regular Mason jar lid and use the reCAPs to make more ferments. They are also great for using your jars to make salad dressing, syrups, etc. that you can easily pour and store.

The two sauerkraut recipes I made are for jalapeno kraut and caraway kraut. Both make 1 quart of sauerkraut. I'm hoping that these recipes will inspire more people to try fermenting and preserving foods.

Spiced peach butter

I was trying to figure out something to do with all of the peaches we have and decided to try making a peach butter. I also decided that I was going to try to make it in the slow cooker overnight. 

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I left on the skins, threw everything in the slow cooker, and set it to low before I went to bed. It was really nice to wake up to the smell of this slightly spiced peach butter on a Saturday morning. 

The peaches we had were very juicy and this peach butter ended up taking quite a long time to cook down in the slow cooker. When I woke up in the morning, I pureed it with the immersion blender and then bumped up the setting to high, took off the lid, and let it reduce some more. 

This made about 5-6 jelly jar sized containers of peach butter. It will be perfect for spreading on toast, muffins, or any other baked good! 

You should taste your peaches first to gauge how sweet they are and help you determine how much sugar you want to add. Start low and add more if needed.

Spiced peach butter
about 15 medium peaches, pitted and cut into chunks
about 1/4 cup granulated sugar
about 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
dash of sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg

Put all of the ingredients in your slow cooker on the low setting. Let cook about 6-8 hours.


Puree using an immersion blender or in a blender or food processor (then return to slow cooker). Taste for sugar and spices and adjust if needed. Set slow cooker to high and continue to cook for another 1-3 hours uncovered, stirring occasionally, until your desired thickness.

Let cool. Place the peach butter in jars or freezer containers. Refrigerate for up to one month, or freeze for later.