{the new year} Fasting

Editor’s Note: This is our second week of reflective posts contemplating the start of a new year. We are putting these lists, reflections and helpful links out onto the interwebs to keep ourselves accountable and hopefully, to inspire your food/gardening/homesteady-related antics in 2012. Take it away Dianna! -Christina My New Year’s resolution is to fast…

{4 saturdays, 4 giveaways} An Everlasting Meal

Editor’s Note: On December 29th, my 36th birthday, I asked our fabulous Facebook community to get us to 1500 “likes” by January 1st. We had, I think, 11 to go. I said if we made it to 1500, we would host 4 giveaways on 4 consecutive weeks to celebrate. Did we hit 1500? Yes yes…

{the new year} coping with mid-winter food blues

Maybe it’s being trapped inside at home with a new baby, but I’m prematurely feeling that mid-winter desperation about what to make for dinner every night.  This feeling worsens when we’ve skipped a week at the farmers market and have no fresh, local produce.  Local green vegetables are already becoming less prevalent and I can…

{winter projects 2012} Fancy Hi Hat Cupcakes

Editor’s Note: Selifishly, I’m really excited about this post. Miles’ 3rd birthday is Monday and I plan on making him some special cupcakes to share at school… and these are the ones! Hi Hat Cupcakes- nope, I’ve never heard of them either but they look amazing and Becky’s description of them makes me wish a…

{winter projects 2012} English Muffin Bread

Editor’s Note: You are gonna wanna make this bread. Trust me. If you have visited any number of our community tables you will have tried Liz’s English Muffin Bread as its our “go-to” platform for sampling our mustards & butters and hopefully you’ve grabbed our recipe card after taste testing. It is truly an easy…

{winter projects 2012} Three Berry Pop-Tarts

Editor’s Note: Who wants to learn to make berry-filled hot pockets of goodness? I do! I do! Deanna’s post was first published, in springtime on May 23rd 2011 as Sundays on the Sunporch: Three Berry “Pop-Tarts”. We also get a glimpse of a toddler cooking with a bucket on her head… who doesn’t do that?…

{winter projects 2012} Butter In A Jar

Editor’s Introductory Note: To give us another week to get back “into the swing of things”, I decided to have a very special week of posts lined up in advance. I asked all six contributors with a personal blog (Christine, Jillian, Erika, Deanna, Liz & Becky) to republish an “oldie but a goodie” post here on…

{recap} Goodbye 2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR! We wish you all a healthy, happy, fun & fabulous 2012! +++ It is 8am on January 1, 2012 and I couldn’t be more excited. A new year. A fresh start. A beginning. And an end. Goodbye 2011. {FSC Swappers, Albany, November 2011} Speaking purely in terms of the FSC, 2011 was…

{roundup} FSC Edible Gifts 2011

Well..well….well. Hanukkah is upon us. Christmas is soon to follow then New Years. I don’t know about you but I feel like December has f-l-o-w-n by. Wizzed. Sprinted. Galloped. It will be 2012 in 9 days. Whoa. In the meantime, I’ve been frantically creating edible & non-edible gifts (Jillian’s lotion from the Ebook is AMAZING)…

{from scratch holidays} Mocktail Mixers

{Grape Expectation} Holiday mode is in full effect. Tonight is the third night of Hanukkah and Christmas is this weekend. Or maybe you are more of a Winter Solstice person. And let’s not forget New Years Eve is next Saturday! Either way, you are probably going to get down with your bad self over the…

{from scratch holidays} Perfect Vegan Latkes for Hanukkah

Hanukkah is here, and in our home that means my husband Jeff spends a few days making his perfect vegan latkes (sometimes called potato pancakes, and pronounced “laht-kuhs“). All traditional latkes contain shredded or ground potatoes. Many contain onions and eggs. They are fried in oil (cooking with oil is one of the things you…

{edible gift} Chocolate Dipped Candied Orange Peels

My sister-in-law is a new vegan. I had a moment of disquiet about this over Thanksgiving, saying to her, “But what are we going to do about mashed potatoes?” We sub-divided them, of course, which was perfectly sensible. But my next question was even more important: what about dessert?!?!?! Thanksgiving without pie? Really? She made…

{from scratch holidays} Challah for Christmas

Some of my earliest memories are of my Jewish grandmother setting out a loaf of challah, along with a spread of white fish, cream cheese, lox and bagels.  She never made any of these foods herself, but challah still reminds me of her.  Recently I developed an interest in making challah bread myself.  Thinking about…

{from scratch holidays} Arugula Pesto, Two Ways

I like local food. I like to eat it, I like to read about it and I like to sell it. Every Saturday morning I am lucky enough to talk about and sell local vegetables for Michael Kilpatrick (Kilpatrick Family Farm) at the farmers market in Saratoga Springs. Working at the market is so much fun for me,…

{from scratch holidays} Cheesy Potato Casserole: Makeover Edition

For the holidays my grandmother would make a dish that was simply called Cheesy Potato Casserole. It’s pretty much exactly what you would find at a Midwestern church potluck. I absolutely adored it and my brother and I would beg for it whenever we had a family holiday meal together. As my grandmother got older,…