Last night was a big night for me. I made jam without added sugar for the very first time. This pear lemon jam is primarily sweetened with white grape juice concentrate; it achieves a set with the help of Pomona’s Universal Pectin. Why did I do it? I am not going to act like the…
I love half wine barrel planters. At our house, we have challenging clay soil and a whole lot of slippery hillside to work with. The barrels are great because I can set them on our big, sunny deck and place them along hillside walkways. They make it easier to maintain the soil and they put…
When I began my monthly veggie challenge, I didn’t plan to make it alphabetical. But as soon as Stewart brought home January’s artichoke, the idea took stubborn root. So now we have month two, brought to you by the vegetable letter B. And I get to look forward to not just one, but more than…
This is a basket of Meyer lemons that I boosted from some tree last year. It might have been the tree in front of the foreclosed house near the town library, or they might have come from my favorite tree on an unfenced lot in Berkeley. This year’s harvest is coming in smaller and slower,…
Look what happened here today! After a few weeks of warm, sunny weather, we’re back in a cycle of rainstorms, complete with bonus hail. Frozen stuff doesn’t often fall from the sky around here, so it’s pretty exciting. Last month, I did a post about starting seeds, including information about the fungus attack that threatened…
I am a chronic nail biter. I’ve been this way since the fourth grade, when I noticed a classmate biting her nails and thought it looked interesting enough to try it myself. When you’re a kid, a two-second thought can become a thirty-six year habit just like that. Now, the only way I can keep…
A couple of weeks ago I went to a marmalade making class with Rachel Saunders at Blue Chair Fruit. It was a wonderful opportunity to spend an afternoon learning from someone who has been crafting beautiful marmalades for a dozen years. These were my favorite things about the class: It provided a thorough overview of…
I feel great about starting my veggie challenge with the artichoke. Stewart didn’t plan to begin at the top of the list when he chose my opening vegetable, but it turns out that there are very few items ahead of the artichoke in the Alphabet of Vegetables. Only Amaranth and Anise, if you don’t include…
One of the most popular recipes I’ve posted on this blog is a tasty, simple Pomegranate Champagne Jelly. In the comments to that post, a couple of folks asked whether it would be okay to include the pomegranate arils — that is, the seeds in their beautiful red, fleshy wrappings. I didn’t think it would…
This is one of those posts where I tell you about a dumb thing I did so that you don’t have to do the same dumb thing yourself. I know that some of you who stop by this blog are honest-to-goodness farmers, or Master Gardeners, or just a whole lot more experienced in the garden…
Whew! There were moments during the past couple of weeks when I didn’t think I could pull it off — but welcome to the new home of Hitchhiking to Heaven! The old version of this blog was starting to suffer from growing pains, so I moved it here to WordPress with the intention of making…
Photo by Allie_Caulfield via Flickr Creative Commons I wish I had dozens of gift cards to give away, because the comments on the CHEFS Catalog giveaway post were so inspiring and entertaining. You all want to do and make such wonderful stuff this year! You listed foodstuffs as diverse as kimchi, sausage, bread, and beer….