Being able to preserve your harvest for later use is just as big a part of self-sufficiency as growing the produce. Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food in such a way as to stop or greatly slow its spoilage, and prevent foodborne illness while maintaining nutritional value, texture and flavour. When crops
It’s always a conundrum when unripe fruit falls from a tree. Should you bin it? Compost it? Or try to ripen it? Fruit that has been damaged or nibbled at by large pests like bats or possums is best disposed of, but unspoiled pieces can definitely be eaten- when they’re mangoes, at least! Green mangoes
Making relish is a great way to preserve your beetroot and perfect for when you have a whole crop that needs to be harvested at once. It’s spreadable, versatile, and will last several weeks in the fridge. Beetroot relish adds interest to a cheese platter or poached eggs, can be used to top mini quiches,
Flavoured salts are a great way to give an extra boost to recipes or finished dishes without adding extra calories or fat. Even better, making your own is super-easy: all it takes is some salt, fresh herbs from your garden, & a little time. The result is a fragrant blend that is far better than
We all know how good an authentic home-grown heirloom tomato is, so it’s no wonder that tomatoes are one of the most common plants in any home vegetable garden. But growing great produce is really only half of the self-sufficiency journey; we need to know how to use & preserve our harvests too. There are
Lemons are one of the most versatile fruits on earth, so it’s no wonder a lemon tree is high on every gardeners must-have list. But once you get that wonderful lemon tree fruiting, you may well find yourself blessed with more lemons than you know what to do with! Luckily, lemons have an enormous array
It makes a lot of sense to preserve radishes so you can enjoy them at any time. Despite being quick and easy to grow, radishes don’t grow year-round in most climates. On top of that, oftentimes you’ll only want to use a little at a time. So it really does make sense to preserve them
Beets, beetroot, whatever you want to call them, when you have too many…. well, you have too many. Yet with the price of food these days, none of us wants to be wasting anything home-grown, especially a seasonal crop like beetroot. Our self-sufficiency journey isn’t just about growing the food; we need to know how
Keeping a flock of chickens in your backyard is a great step towards self-sufficiency. A supply of fresh, organically-produced, free-range eggs is a big plus…but what if you get too many at once? Sure, you can boil, poach, fry, and scramble- but what else can you do to make the most of your eggs? Here’s
When it’s time to harvest your fresh ginger, what do you do with it all? Sure, you eat some, and you keep some for planting next season, but then what? What do you do with the rest of it? Ginger is a valuable crop to grow at home because it commands a high price in
Preserving jars (the really good ones) are expensive to buy; however, if you keep an eye out you can still find excellent quality preserving jars for "free" scavenged from products we use. The pic (above) shows this free jar in action used to preserve cucumber, Jerusalem artichoke root, and mustard stems Now, most standard jars
If you are considering growing backyard olives then the Arbequina variety is worth checking out! Arbequina olive trees are a popular commercial variety of olive because they produce a good olive oil but they are also a common variety sold on the domestic market due to being an early fruiting tree and often produce
I often get asked, "what are you going to do with all that produce?" Sometimes people enquire because their first thought when seeing a glut of homegrown food is waste but here's how I see an oversupply of produce: Success – Whenever we get a great harvest I see the achievement. Backyard farming isn't always,
The act of preservation through drying is one of the most popular methods of keeping food for extended storage. Dehydration naturally (by sun or air) or artificially ( by a drying device) allows us to grow or acquire a surplus product in season and then have the opportunity to consume that product at a much
This is just a short article on how to quickly preserve excess jalapenos (and other chillies) through pickling. So if chillies through winter are difficult to grow where you are, then pickling them to save for the cooler times of the year is the way to go. Pickled Jalapeno Chillies in Jars Step 1
This article was revised on 05 Feb 2017. Biltong is a South African type of dried/dehydrated meat introduced/founded by the early Dutch settlers. The name is derived from two words “bil” – meaning buttock (the buttock, rear, or rump of the beast) and “tong” – meaning strip (the cut of meat in strips). The purpose
This article was updated on 12 Oct 2014. I thought I'd knock-up this quick guide to making banana chips, whilst I think of it before I end up archiving my images and forgetting about them – as I can do. Banana chips don't need any big introduction and they are so simple to make that
Right, I want to make this a straight forward quick post about how to make tamarillo fruit leathers. Often, I write rather long in-depth articles but this recipe is so easy and plus I have written about tamarillos before (Tamarillo or Tree Tomato) so there isn't any need to re-hash about growing the fruit. We have had
My Thai Red Chilli Paste can be used as a flavour base for laksas, soups, curries, noodles, and to add some extra bite to stir-fries. This summer I had a bumper crop of chillies and they are still going strong even as winter approaches. An abundance of chillies is a good thing because they are
Introduction Honestly, I'd be lost without my Excalibur dehydrator because we use it all the time in our household. The money our dehydrator has saved us alone has well and truly paid for the initial purchase of the appliance and I could have used “money” as one of the 10 reasons below on its own;
Self Sufficient Me is a blog about self-sustainment by growing our own produce (plant/animal), and self-fulfilment by looking after our health (physical/mental) through exercise and slowing life down a little.
