We faced a similar issue and shifted to a tomato replacement. We found using carrot, pumpkin and beetroot to make a “Nomato” style sauce that can be the base for a chili, soup or pasta sauce
I love the tomato conversation. I live on Whidbey in the PNW and growing tomatoes is the ultimate gardening challenge here. This year, I realized how much energy I put into growing them-energy that would be better spent on crops like kale and potatoes which grow well here. It’s funny how long we will try to grow something because we think we should.
I stopped canning tomatos. I core them, quarter them, and freeze in gallon bags. When thawed, the peels slide right off, and they go in the pot to make sauce when I need it. Saved SO much time and effort!
Also, if you want to make sauce, toss the tomatoes in a strainer and allow all the water to just drain as they thaw. After all the clear water drains off, run them through a strainer/ mill (I have a squeeze -o- strainer but any will do) out comes thick sauce, almost a paste. So much less cooking time!
What happens when the grid goes down? You have no canned tomatos to make sauce with. You can still cook with a gas stove, wood burning, fire place or fire pit!
I was impressed by my aunt's way of adding squash (winter squash) into the diet. She added it to every soup and stew, stir fry, skillet meal etc. as just another added veggie. Instead of trying to eat it as a side dish. She added it to everything else in small quantity. It worked . And winter squash does not add too much change in flavor if added in small amounts.
I have always enjoyed your Pantry Chats as well as this new format. I gave up growing tomatoes when I lived in Western Washington. Too much work for not enough rewards. Instead, I enjoyed potatoes, beets, green beans. I now live again in Central Texas and though I can grow tomatoes again, many of the other crops don’t do well here. My go to cookbook for vegetables is “The Victory Garden Cookbook” by Marian Morash, published in 1982.
Loved the conversation. I have been trying to change the mindset of "what do we want for dinner" to "what do we have for dinner". Some of out best meals have generate from what we already had. Last year I grew Soya Lunga Cucumbers (heat tolerant which is great for our Texas Summers). I had so many cucumbers that we were coming up with all kinds of ways to make them. I discovered that if you shred and drain them, you could use them as a replacement for bananas in bake goods. We had cucumber bread, cake and cookies.
Great conversation, was fun to listen to. We all need to consider this, with the times that we are in, we won't always be able to get what we want. Seasonal eating and eating what we have in storage or in the garden, the way it was for thousands of years. Let's get back to it.
This was a great chat today! I have ideas for PUMPKIN! So I have added either pureed frozen pumpkin or home canned pumpkin chunks to spaghetti sauce when making on stove. You do NOT taste it, but stretches your sauce substaintially and bulks it up too. It also sweetens naturally. Highly recommend. Also you can make spaghetti sauce to preserve, you can add pumpkin, you will just need to pressure can instead. Another tip is add pureed pumpkin to alfredo sauce, Delicious! My family loves it this way. Another idea is add your pumpkin alfredo sauce to a lasagna and make a non traditonal lasgana either with chicken or ground saussge. Another idea is add chunkcs of pumpkin to your veggie, minestrone, or beef soup recipe. Just another veggie and so good too. As you play with this idea, you will come up with some others. I'm sure you could add to your traditional bread recipe. NOT pumpkin sweet bread, but just sandwich bread for added nutrition. If you check out @Acre homestead, Becky has some ideas on how to use pumpkin. Homesteading does help you stretch your mind and your resourcefulness to use the ingredients that you grow and be good stewards of what the gracious Lord has provided. It's a blessing and a priviledge to honor Him this way and be creative too! May God bless you and your family in your endeavors. I enjoy watching your channel! Always good ideas on here! Watching from GA
@@joannahines6413 I all for being good stewards of what the Gracious Lord provides for us right where we are living. I am learning to cope with a very long season of midsummer heat. Seed starting is a challenge with such a short window of time between winter nights being too cold until summer nights(actually already in spring) are too hot inside the house. We generally don't live with central heating/cooling in South Africa.
Pumpkins and winter squash make amazing pasta sauce, add a little cream and cheese and blend! And roast them in olive oil with other root crops! Oh man! Stuff them with pork and apples and sage! Oh they are so good so many ways!
My grandparents migrated to North Idaho in 1939 after the dust bowl in the Dakotas. They raised almost all of their own food because they could not afford trips to the grocery store. Thankfully, while growing up, I paid attention to their lifestyle. My grandmother grew and canned corn, carrots, green beans, and stored cabbages, parsnips, turnips, and rutabagas, and of course potatoes. The only things they bought in the store were coffee , sugar, and flour. I do not remember ever having anything exotic on the table, including no cheese, except for the cottage cheese that my grandmother made from the raw milk from their milk cow. The one exotic exception to that was Nabisco soda, crackers that my grandfather slathered with homemade cultured butter. They had chickens, sheep, and pigs, and my grandfather hunted for deer elk. That was pretty much the extent of what they ate.
Hello Friends, It has been fun watching you grow, learn and share. I always learn something. I thought I would share a bit of our journey over the years. My husband and I have shared 35 years together. When we were just getting started, we purchased a small 3/4 acre lot in town. Over the years we have tried to make the most of our little homestead. We still live on that same property today. Since we were young and knew nothing about supplying our own food, We both decided to start our journey by becoming master gardeners and I became a master preserver. We went through about 10 years “sustenance” gardening. Meaning we ate what we grew. If we didn’t grow it, we didn’t eat it. At times we had the kids even sleep in the garden to protect it from the usual southern Oregon wildlife. Our food became very precious to us. We had a couple big takeaways. 1. Eat seasonally. Don’t try to have the same diet in winter as summer. We no longer felt the need to grow tomatoes ( or anything else) indoors during winter 2. WE learned to grow a winter garden as abundantly as a summer garden. This is actually my favorite garden. Less work. Very little preserving or storage needed. No weeds. And, no bugs! Besides, there is nothing more fun than to go out in the middle of winter m, brush off the snow and harvest a cabbage or a stem of broccoli for dinner. Highly recommend! Thank you for sharing and teaching. I always learn something new. Many blessings to you and your husband. Jean
I really enjoyed this video. I enjoy the pantry chat in general. I love the chitchat and I love to hear what’s going on around your farm and with your family. So matter what the format is, I always enjoy it.❤
This was a really nice change. I love the instructional videos and the educational ones too. The time flew by and I was grateful to hear how you evolve.
You guys sure gave "food for thought" in this one! We live in southern Mississippi (zone 8b). Now I realize most of my garden struggles are from trying to grow things that just don't do well in an extremely hot, humid climate. We have a really long growing season here and can get two plantings in of many different things. I just need to focus on growing more of what grows well and adapt our palate. Great chat!
@shelleylee8774 I'm in 9A, and July and half of August are not worth the struggle. Next year, I'll be starting potatos in Feb, and the rest in March, and use those 6 weeks in summer to prep for the fall garden. It does take a bit to figure out what does well, and where (which is why I have so many seeds!)
EXACTLY the same here in central Texas, zone 8b (bordering 9). I watch gardeners across the country and have to remind myself that we are just NOT the same. The last two years were 100+ degrees for over 100 days straight while in a drought. Growing root crops in summer (other than potatoes) is laughable… unless you want awful tasting carrots… This is a vital conversation: understanding what our different environments want to grow and the most sustainable ways to grow them. This is also why I raise zebu cattle and Pygmy goats: they hale from very hot, arid climates with sparse vegetation. No feather footed chickens for us either! I’m not putting an air conditioner in my chicken coop. Animal, vegetable, mineral: if it’s not heat hearty, it doesn’t belong here…
I have taken a “lazy gardener” approach. I don’t want a lot of fussy seed starting indoors… I’m looking for stuff I can direct sew and get a harvest from. I’m in Ohio. I have had some tomato’s that did fantastic this year. And the fussy ones will not make it in next year. I’ve done that with them all. The exception is peppers. I can’t get them to make without some babying indoors in the beginning and they do so much better for me with a hydroponic start. I suppose if I can just have 1 fussy crop that would be better than a bunch of them.
With peppers to make them even less fussy though you can take this year's plants, lift them in the fall and pot them up, and then keep them (about a foot tall with no leaves) in the garage or a shed until spring. Look up a video to make sure you do it right but those peppers will last you many years if you do that.
I had my first successful bell pepper year. It may be because I dug up last year's plant and over wintered it in the basement and replanted in the garden in may, this year's weather, the irrigation I chose, or that I planted it with basil and marigold plants... I'm not sure, but I do understand your pepper struggles! Maybe next year I'll give the hydroponic start a go! Thanks!!
I'm a lazy gardener too. I was surprised how easy it was to overwinter my peppers this last winter and now year two, I am actually getting peppers! I live in MN.
FYI acre homestead uses freeze dried zucchini ground into a powder. She used it as a replacement for some of the wheat flour in her bread recipe and she said it was wonderful.
Love it! The pantry chat is about chatting. Sharing stories and knowledge so I don’t think it’s a departure at all. Keeping doing both, they’re just variations on the same theme. Hearing the thought process and seeing specific examples is SO beneficial and one of those things that you can’t buy or be taught but you can learn by seeing, sharing, and understanding.
Your giggling is adorable, and I love the way you love each other. Thankyou for being an example of a couple who has been together many years now and still love and respect each other. ❤
It is sweet that you still blush when your husband pays you a compliment, even if he's teasing in the context of your conversation. It's also sweet of him to think to compliment you. ❤❤ Can never get enough of loving banter😊
I normally listen to your podcast but came to RU-vid specifically to tell you that I loved this episode! I love the levity and the chit chat! Thanks for all you do
I have found that focusing on "easy" crops like grinding corn, potatoes, dry beans, onions, garlic, carrots, beets, parsnips, rutabagas and winter squash gives me an abundance of food that needs minimal processing. So many different meals can be made with these foods. Especially since we also raise Nigerian Dwarf Dairy goats and a mixed flock of dual purpose hens. Add in a few tomatoes, peppers, cukes, etc. This leaves more time for foraging mushrooms, herbs, etc. When time and energy are limited, working smart makes life more enjoyable.
Jess from Roots and Refuge said it this way "Change your appetite to fit your convictions." In other words...eat what grows where you live. It's a journey.
You gave us lots to think about in this episode. I’ve been wondering lately if some of the food allergies and sensitivities that so many people have these days might be due to eating both non-local and non-seasonal foods. I especially like your idea of eliminating some of the work and stress that come with this lifestyle! Thanks for sharing your wisdom!
Very helpful conversation, Thank you! I live in a very similar climate to you and have been thinking through the garden and reassessing the meat sources we are raising. Such a great productive process in this life! Can wait for the Summit!!
I love this type of conversation. The reality of Homesteading and how things and mindsets change over time. And to work with the land and crops you have and do well, will help with maximizing the time you have. And the creativity to form your main diet around those crops.
Ok, I just had this conversation with my 90 year-old mother today. And she said what my grandma would do when she had a bitter cucumber or a bitter eggplant. She would soak them in salt water for a half an hour, drain and rinse them and then process - it would take the bitterness out. I imagine that would apply for all squash plants. However, I think it was her standard practice, whether she knew if they were bitter or not. AND, Josh, I think you are becoming our next Joel Salatin! - Seriously! I really did enjoy this Pantry Chat format!
I definitely like this kind of conversation. As a single female working overtime to make ends meet, gardening alone is kind of making me hot my brick wall. I'm forever exhausted. Lol. I haven't even added in any chciken yet!
We don't expect a seaside town to eat beef when they have fish available. It only makes sense to adjust our menu to what is available in our area. Great talk. 🙂
I am 76 years old and grew up on the farm. Actually I am the 6th generation of my family to live on this land. WE always ate what we grew and preserved the rest. I live in North Texas and have a long growing season. We do have lots of heat usually 20 to 25days of 100 degree weather. My tomatoes stop producing with that type of heat as well as other things, but things like okra loves it. We taylor our gardening to our climate, and meals to what we can grow. Loved the chat. Thanks for all you do. Linda❤
You can take a bitter cucumber and cut the stem end off and rub the cut end together making circles and wiping off the white foam and I do both end. No more bitter.
I love the change to the pantry chat! Normally I tune in ready to learn. Today I tuned in and was challenged to think and consider and change! Thank you. A couple years ago some circumstance arose that required my husband and I to swap jobs on our farm. The amazing byproduct of this was we both had great ideas on how to streamline each other’s systems! Fresh eyes!
I like to use things to stretch the things we use. I add a lot of zucchini, carrots and other vegetables to my pasta sauce for a deeper flavor and to add vitamins.
Love it! We are in Manitoba (similar climate) and I have struggled for years to get enough tomatoes to do anything with! This year I planted a 60 foot row of them. I am now freezing them until I get enough! Sugar Pie pumpkins and BN Squash grow great. I FD throughout the winter and use them in smoothies, as thickeners in soup/stew/gravy and pumpkin pancakes. I will not plant an entire row of tomatoes again!
A trick for knowing if the cuke is bitter, is to cut the stem end off and rub it in a circle. The white foam that forms is the bitter. Toss that part and turn upside down, rinse under running water. Then take another slice and repeat. Usually two slices is all you need. Use thin slice, so you don't get to the seed area. If the third slice is bitter, toss or give to chickens.
I live in New Zealand and pumpkins here are always used as a savoury dish. Roasted pumpkin is probably the most common way we eat them. Cut them up and toss them in a little oil and put into a hot oven. Chop them into beef or pork casserole. Pumpkin soup with onion ginger root and garlic , toss in a bit of oil before putting in the homemade stock. Another way to make pumpkin soup is to cut the top off a whole pumpkin and reserve it. Scoop the seeds out and fill the cavity it’s some cream and some chicken stock,salt and pepper and a little nutmeg. Put the top back on and put the pumpkin into a roasting pan, and pop it into the oven and cook until tender. Serve whole scooping out the inside. Happy savoury pumpkin eating.
We are just over the mountains to the west of you, having a similar season for growing and the same issues to deal with. It's helpful hearing someone else brainstorm about thoughts that have just recently begun to surface in our own conversations. Thank you.
Stefan Sobkowiak at The Permaculture Orchard always encourages viewers to grow the things that grow like weeds. They take very little effort, water, fertilizer, etc. That's exactly what yall are working towards. It's really changed my garden planning and the effort I have to put into it.
I gave up on trying to grow difficult crops and now grow only things that are pretty dependable. If it doesn't produce well, I don't even try to grow it. It's a huge waste of time and effort.
Love it. I also need recipes to use what grows well in my garden. I don't eat squash often, but I'm trying baby butternut squash this year. I like beets, but the rest of the family does not. You are correct in saying we eat from habit, not from what grows well in our area. God bless y'all and keep growing.
I agree. I would really hate giving up avocados and bananas, but I do believe that local seasonal eating is the healthiest. I’d love to have a seasonal cookbook for garden to table local ingredient cooking for my zone. I was just telling my husband today that when I was a kid, I believed that the end of school meant watermelons would be available! That’s not true in our garden. (Zone 6B/7A). If anyone knows of any good cookbooks like that, I’d love to know!
Freeze dried zucchini blended into a flour makes a good substitute for flour in some recipes (50/50). It’s also a good thickener for spaghetti sauce and different sauces.
I enjoyed your conversation. It is evident we should continually evaluate our actions and results, not just keep doing what we’ve always done without it benefiting us.
I totally agree with what you said about the tomatoes. We spend our whole summer gardening, and in Tennessee my garden can continue all the way into October. Usually our first frost is October 30th or around that time. Today I’m making hot sauce and I really wanna go to my sewing room and finish some projects that I wanted to give for Christmas but I’m canning and that’s my choice because I don’t want the food to go to waste so we are cutting back next year it’s only me and my husband which I do share with my grown kids, but it’s time for them to learn how to do their own garden lol thank you for the chat it’s great!
Pumpkins are great year round. If you have a smaller variety they are great hollowed out, filled with fruit and roasted. Pumpkin soup is great in the fall. They can even be harvested green, cleaned, sliced up and fried.
Great conversation. I thought that I HAD to can tomatoes to be a good gardener. However, they just don't do well in my space. So I accepted that and stuck with only growing a few Tommy Toe plants that take care of themselves, and it's so much less stressful. Evaluation is such a great tool. Thanks for sharing your journey!
Yes! After 10 tears I am not spending so much effort on cucumbers, eggplant and melons (I'm in Michigan's UP) , and we don't even eat that much of them! Focusing on perennials like asparagus, rhubarb, berries, many herbs, roots, onions, garlic, squash, greens and beans, I do peppers and tomatoes in a small green house. and if I grow it, we are eating it!
One thing I’ve changed is focusing on large crops rotated. For example this year was focusing on green beans and crushed tomatoes. While I preserved some items, not nearly as much as the beans and crushed tomatoes. I’ve learned by alternating these I’m not spending so much time on all of it. For our family I ended up putting up 300 pints of beans and tomatoes. This will last us 2-3 years. Next year I’ll be able to grow less beans and eat what we grow fresh.
For pumpkin we use them as a side more then anything else. We grow more Seminole pumpkin, and darker pulps pumpkin. I love to roast them in cube with olive oil and then add herb the Provence and honey. My family likes the whole pumpkin stuff with nuts and cheese(soft cheeses) and roasted. Good luck with the pumpkin! It is a journey I am walking as well trying to stop fighting what I grow.
I'm very onboard with you on this! We live just south of you and have the same climate. A couple of things we are in the process of growing are hazelnuts and black currents. Once they grow up, they should provide a lot and be easy to store. This session has given me a lot to think about!😊
I'm having the same issue! Pumpkins and squashes are so fun to grow but the only way we eat them is in soup with little variation. Working to find new ways as well!
Love the points made and format used! I agree with the knowledge you shared and the purposeful way of approaching the fun and rewarding, but complex world of gardening/working hard/time management!
I left some veggies out from my garden this year, not because I don’t like them, but they are just too much work. It was very freeing, and I can always buy those items from other gardeners.
🇦🇺I love pumpkin soup with black pepper. Yum. In Australia pumpkins are a savoury dish not a dessert. Roast potatoes and pumpkins with meat. Pumpkin in salad.
A few years again the frost hit earlier and we had a lot of green tomatoes so the salsa was green tomatoes salsa instead of red that year. We used what we had.
Pumpkins - I grew up eating pumpkins as a dessert, but I've recently loved stuffing pumpkins with rice and sausage and baking/eating together or cubing them and roasting on a pan with other veggies. Also realized that beets don't have to be pickled. They taste great with salt, pepper and butter. Love the video.
I really enjoyed today's pantry chat! As someone who's just started to garden as an adult in the last 5 years or so, I've learned that the larger tomatoes struggle very much in my garden. Maybe I am not feeding them enough nutrients, but I've had much better success with cherry sized tomatoes! The red, the yellow pear, and the black cherry type of varieties are prolific for me. But I absolutely am having to learn how to better use what I grow. I'm very grateful to this community as the STS community has helped me learn so much in a short time.❤
I think this is one of the best pantry chats I've ever heard from y'all. Please keep allowing us to just hear the conversations, even (maybe especially) when you're just thinking out loud and acknowledging the challenges of living "simply". As a Virginian living in SW Idaho, the learning curve for suitable garden vegetables has been a little steep. I still aspire to some great tomatoes, one of these years!
