FROM SCRATCH CLUB

For my contribution this month, I figured I’d share one of my favorite go-to brownie recipes, and introduce its secret ingredient – roasted chickpea flour. Roasted chickpea flour is orders of magnitude different than plain chickpea flour as it comes from the bag. Roasting the garbanzo flour gives it a nice deep rich nutty flavor, […]

We make maple syrup by tapping neighborhood trees every year and boiling the sap down in our driveway on a make-shift cinder block fireplace.  This year our syruping partner Lin suggested that we try using the fire to cook while we sat around all day drinking rum and watching the sap boil; a kind of […]

My name is Betsy, and I am a lip balm addict. Like many of you, I have lip balm in multiple purses, in my car, in most rooms of the house, etc. As you might imagine, this habit can get expensive, especially since those little tubes are easy to misplace. Making your own lip balm […]

Over the course of a few winters, Dianna has compiled a detailed series of posts on tapping maple syrup in your urban & suburban surroundings. The time is now to read up on the techniques, supply list and process so that you can begin tapping in another couple of weeks as spring is right around […]

AHHH…chocolate. If my best friend was a food this would be it.  So amazingly satisfying on many different levels with so many options in flavors and taste. Milk, dark, bitter, organic, fair trade; the spices and flavorings are endless.  Little does one realize though, chocolate is simple, easy, and quick to make yourself. You just […]

As I stated in our first post of our “Best of 2012″ series, Gardening in 2012, for the next handful of weekends I’ll be jumping on the FSC Time Machine to create recap-posts on the different topics we covered in 2012. Its not the weekend you say? I know I know… I was too excited to wait to […]

Editor’s Note: Gina of Modschooler & Albany Kid is back with yet another informative post, this time she discusses her love for the FSC Book Club, The Homemade Pantry & Kimchi. Gina’s other pieces include: Slow Cooker Dulce de Leche, Vegetable Bouillon, Slow Cooker Beans, Empire Boardwalk & Downton Abbey- Inspired Drinks, Homemade Grenadine, and Serious […]

Editor’s Note: FSC Community Voices Contributor, Gina M, a local blogger at ModSchooler and a guest contributor at Albany Kid, is back with another doozie of a post: Homemade Veggie Bouillion.  Its getting food preservation serious up in here! Her first post, No-Fuss Slow Cooker Beans is also terrific, perfect for the summertime no-heat kitchen! […]

We have been growing wheat for three or four years in our community sharecropping plots.   Wheat is not hard to grow and not all that hard to harvest although there are some pitfalls.  The hard part is removing the teeny wheat berries from the inedible straw and glumes that surround them, which is called threshing.  […]

As you might already know, we raise backyard chickens in order to have fresh eggs and because, quite frankly, I enjoy having chickens in the yard. Its also old news that most of the poultry we consume comes from birds we’ve raised ourselves, including chickens, turkeys and surplus roosters which are quite tasty when made […]

I love to garden. Maybe you do too. I love to do lots and lots of things. So many things, in fact, that I am too busy to allocate as much time to my garden as I would like. If only I had an extra 2 hours a day… that would make things so much […]

    O wind, where have you been, That you blow so sweet? Among the violets Which blossom at your feet – Christina (Georgina) Rossetti This Spring, I discovered that many of the “weeds” that grow in my yard are edible! This is exciting if, like me, you enjoy foraging for food and, come springtime, are […]

Making vegetable stock is so easy, yet I’m guessing that not all of you have homemade stock on hand. By the time I remember to make some stock, I only have half an onion or a single celery stalk to work with and something about buying a whole basket of fresh veggies just to boil […]

My last post about syruping included a few photos of the cinder block fireplace we built in 2011 for boiling down the sap that we collect from maple trees in our neighborhood.  When we built our current fireplace a week later, I took more extensive photos.  We changed our fireplace a little this year; we […]

Editor’s Note: Its that time of year again- Maple Sap running! You can do it- go outside & tap your neighborhood maple trees (with permission from your neighbors of course!) Dianna is back with another (helpful) installment in her How To Maple Syrup Series. If you weren’t with us last year this time, Dianna cranked […]