Recipes | Comfort, Care and Nourishment

Oct 27, 2007 Posted in From the Garden, Recipes

Comfrey Salve

Comfrey is a beautiful plant with large furry leaves and beautiful lavender flowers. It can be dried as a tea or made into a soothing salve with only a small investment of time. Although, it is a couple processes that need a few weeks.

Gather clean, healthy leaves after the plant has finished blooming. Pack them in a wide mouth 2 quart jar. Fill the jar with olive oil and cover. Keep out of direct sunlight and occasionally tip the jar upside down and then upright again.

After a few weeks the oil will become very dark green. Strain the oil into the top of a double boiler. Put water in the bottom of the double boiler and heat. Add some drops of your favorite fragrant oils like rosemary, lavender or both as the mixture is heating. Add about a teaspoon of vitamin E oil. Add beeswax piece by piece until the texture hardens on a testing spoon. Pour into small, clean jars and wait until cooled to put lids on the jars.

Oct 27, 2007 Posted in Magazine Articles, Preserving

Putting Up Peaches

Teton Home & Living | Autumn 2007

The torments of my childhood summers now deliver quiet pleasure to all of my seasons. As children, my brothers and I dreaded the inevitable annual regimens. They were announced by my parents, “Don’t make any plans for this weekend. We’re freezing corn.” Or beans or peas or asparagus. There was variety in the ultimata: making applesauce, tomato juice, tomato sauce, or canned tomatoes called “stewies”. Much of the picking of berries and vegetables was designated to the males. As many other chores were delegated as women’s work, I fumed as my brothers went off to play while I helped make jams and jellies or pickles or canned peaches or pears.

These were often boisterous activities with passels of aunts, uncles, cousins, one grandmother or another thrown into the mix. After all the work of picking, shucking, silking, blanching, cutting, bagging, boxing, labeling, transferring to the freezer, hauling cobs to the compost, cleaning the kettles and kitchen were finally accomplished, we’d have a feast of a picnic. (more…)

Jan 27, 2007 Posted in Entrées, Recipes