The Strawberry Gap

KevinForaging, From the Garden, From The Wild, Fruit from the Yard, Strawberries, Wild Fruits4 Comments

At the moment, in my mind, these bad boys take top spot at proving how shitty and dumbed down imported-out-of-season-food can be. Fresh strawberries from a plant that was actually bred to produce tasty strawberries, kick ass. If they were a wine, I’d score them 95+ while the crap-styrofoamy-immitation strawberries we get from abroad [no offense, cali-foilks, but the strawberries … Read More

Saskatoon Wine – 2009 Batch 1 Update

KevinFrom the Cellar, From the Garden, Fruit from the Yard, Saskatoon Wine, Wild Fruits, Wine, Wine MakingLeave a Comment

Batch 1 of 09 Saskatoon wine was bottled this week, and I figured it would be useful for other would-be-saskatoon-wine-makers to have some thoughts in the otherwise gaping void of online information about tackling this. First, I’m pretty sure this wine will mature nicely. For a long time, the wine had a tart cherry vibe that was awkward, nearly metallic, … Read More

Ketchup…from scratch

KevinFruit, Summer, Vegetables2 Comments

Having made lard, I’ve been mucking about [very successfully, I may add] with pastry dough. Which lead to tourtiere. Which lead to copious amounts of ketchup being used, which is how I roll with tourtiere. Heinz. I used it up, yep I did. Onto the grocery list it went. Then I considered a ketchup a friend of mine had given … Read More

Saskatoon Wine – 2009 Batch 1

KevinForaging, From the Cellar, From the Garden, Fruit, Saskatoon Wine, Wild Fruits, Wine, Wine Making5 Comments

As with quite a few other items lately, I’m posting about making ‘Saskatoon Wine’ because there seems to be a hole in online information about the topic. After doing some research, I realized that it’s partly because it’s very Canadiana to even call them saskatoons. Amélanche, juneberry, serviceberry, shadberry are more common names elsewhere. I’ll use the terms interchangeably, just … Read More

Apple Harvest Day 2009

KevinCider Making, Fruit, Wine MakingLeave a Comment

Apple Harvest day. A big deal in my little world as it means my first adventure in scratch wine/cidermaking begins now. We picked roughly 75kg of apples today of 4 varieties. Tomorrow we’ll pick from our tree hoping for an additional 40kg. For all those hitting my blog looking for crushing/pressing help, tomorrow will be a big day to find … Read More

My Explosion of Kleenex Needs Bees

KevinFruit, GardeningLeave a Comment

Our Red Sparkle apple tree is a giant riot of white. It makes me happy, many times a day. From afar it looks like a kleenex box exploded all over it. If number of blossoms correlates to number of fruits, we’re in for a crazy yield this year again – last year was 100kg+. Now all we need is those … Read More