Garden, Preserving, Recipe and Homesteading Info Sites

  • Alton Brown. OK, I admit it. I’m practically a groupie. His TV show “Good Eats” on Food Network has taught me a lot about the science behind cooking. A go-to source for “master” recipes.
  • Ball Blue Book. If you have never canned or preserved anything, start here. It’s inexpensive, and can often be found with the canning supplies at the hardware store “in season”. I still refer to their drawing of where 1/4 inch, 1/2 inch and 1 inch “head space” is every time I can.
  • Cooks Illustrated Magazine. I’ve been subscribing to this magazine, and more recently, their website instead, since about 2000. No advertizing, great recipes, and they dig in and test techniques to save you time and aggravation. They also do great equipment reviews and taste tests. Many of my “master” recipes come from here. The only big drawback, aside from the cost, is they don’t publish nutritional information and their recipes are sometimes pretty high calorie, so you need to proceed with some nutritional knowledge going in. (I don’t recommend the “serves 4″ garlic mashed potato recipe that calls for 2 lbs of potatoes, 22 cloves of garlic, 1 stick of butter and 1 cup half and half!)
  • Eating Well Magazine/Website. Wondering what’s for dinner, but want healthy options and nutritional information? This website’s recipe search is where you need to be. I also receive the magazine, which has done some really well researched and written pieces on the local foods movement in the last few years.
  • Food in Jars. This blog has become wildly popular in the last year or two. Great advice on canning, with recipes. Almost as good, the author reposts from lots of other food blogs, serving as a great place to go for lots of preserving information. If you “like” it on Facebook, you’ll see the posts daily.
  • Mother Earth News (MEN). This magazine has been around since the early 70′s and is a great resource for all things back to the land. You can purchase back issues, in 10 year increments, on CD for around $10 each (It’s worth purchasing these just to see how the language and style changes. From a search on the key word “bread” I found a great piece on “How to make more bread” from the early 70′s that was about how to make more money, and stick it to “the man” at the same time). There are other magazines out there, such as Countryside, that cover similar topics, but MEN is better edited. I’ve subscribed to MEN for years. Note that the website pretty much contains everything they have ever published, but can be a bit annoying in its design.
  • National Center for Home Food Preservation. This website is the queen of all extension office type resources on canning. Great information, safe advice. Can’t afford to buy the Ball Blue Book? Go here.

Favorite Blogs

  • 6512 and Growing. This author and I passed like ships in the night when I lived in Southwest Colorado. We traveled in similar circles, but never really connected. Then I moved to the Inland Northwest and started reading her blog. Rachel can turn a phrase and capture a moment and make me laugh out loud like no other blog I read. Her posts about raising two kids while trying to live a sustainable life are well worth your time.
  • Farmgirl Fare. This is the blog that made me want to blog. Part of it was the author’s personal story, which in some weird ways paralleled my own (my father had land in southern Missouri (where the author farms) and I lived there from age 2-4. I mostly grew up in northern California – as did the author). But it was also the fun and sometimes compelling writing, photography and recipes. Any woman who goes to a no-kill animal shelter to adopt some new farm cats and says “give me the three that have been here the longest” has my heart. Enough said.
  • Kiss My Spatula. Want to see pictures of food that will take your breath away and make your stomach rumble? This is the place. This woman is the photographer I can only hope to be. A visual feast.
  • Sweet Juniper. A lawyer turned stay-at-home Dad raising his kids in down and out Detroit. Superb writing. Author is also a bit of an urban harvester, so great posts on picking mulberries in abandoned parking lots with his kids.