Author: Julie Laing | Twice As Tasty

Learn how to eat well year-round by preserving, pickling, freezing, dehydrating, fermenting, and more at TwiceasTasty.com.

Quick Food Preservation

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Dry storage, Freezing, Refrigerating, Topic, WorkshopsLeave a comment

Refrigerating, freezing, and dry storing are the trifecta of quick preservation. Learn more at TwiceasTasty.com.
Preserving your harvest often seems like a daunting, time-consuming task, involving pounds of produce, stacks of jars, and boiling kettles on some of the hottest days of the year. Large-batch canning can operate that way: as a project, albeit one that fills your pantry. But it’s not the only way to preserve what you grow. Preservation can happen every time you come in from the garden with a little more than you and your family will eat at the next meal.

Refrigerating, freezing, and dry storing are the trifecta of quick preservation. As I mentioned while describing their pros and cons last week, produce preserved in these ways requires minimal prep and handling. Most of the tools and packaging you need are likely already in your home. Storage times can vary widely with these techniques, but some tips and tricks will let you get the most out of each. Best of all, a wide range of food can be preserved simply and easily with these quick preservation techniques.
Read more about quick food preservation

Prepare to Preserve

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Dehydrating, Dry storage, Fermenting, Freezing, Refrigerating, Topic, WorkshopsLeave a comment

Whatever your type of produce, storage space, or free time, you can save your harvest. Learn more at TwiceasTasty.com.
How’s your garden growing? If it’s anything like mine, you’ve moved beyond planting to weeding and harvesting—and harvesting, and harvesting. With so much food coming ripe so quickly, it’s time to dig out the canning kettle, dehydrator, crocks, and other preservation tools that will let you enjoy homegrown (or farm fresh from a CSA) produce the rest of the year.

Later this month, I’ll be teaching a free online workshop through Free the Seeds that focuses on preparing to preserve your harvest. It’s a big topic, with far more information than I can share in one session, so I’ll be expanding on that topic all month here at Twice as Tasty. Be sure to join me online July 15 so that I can answer your questions directly (sign up for the Free the Seeds mailing list to receive a registration email), and then check back here for additional tips, tools, and recipes that save your harvest. You’ll also find pages of information on basic tools and techniques here.
Read more about preparing to preserve

Strawberries

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Baking, Event, Ingredient1 Comment

This month I’m drinking my dessert and eating it too. Get cocktail and dessert recipes at TwiceasTasty.com.
If you follow Twice as Tasty on Instagram or Facebook, you won’t be surprised by the topic for this week’s blog post. That photo I shared of Monday’s strawberry harvest from the garden surpassed 12 pounds. No wonder I was tired of picking them by the time I was finished.

Most of those berries will end up as syrup, because it tops my sister’s Christmas wish list every year. As a bonus, I get to keep the roasted fruit solids, turning some into jam and simply freezing the rest in ice-cube trays to drop into smoothies and hot cereal next winter. Some of the fresh ones have already been gobbled up on my morning granola with Fresh Yogurt and my daily salads. But I couldn’t resist baking some into a Twice as Tasty birthday dessert.

I must admit: my fruit-syrup-loving sibling is also the dessert fiend, and I tend to drink my “special treats.” So last week’s post featuring Bourbon-Infused Smoked Cherries appears more often on the “dessert” menu from my kitchen than cakes and cookies. But for birthday month, you can have all the dessert you want, right? So this month I’m drinking my dessert and eating it too—as a simple yet delicious strawberry pudding cake, or clafouti.
Learn to make clafouti with strawberries and other fruit

Smoked Cherries

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Grilling, Refrigerating, TopicLeave a comment

Twice as Tasty’s birthday month seems the perfect time to share my newest favorite way to enjoy tart cherries. Get home-smoked recipes at TwiceasTasty.com.
I’m keeping an impatient eye on my sour cherry tree, waiting for the green fruit to ripen, just so that I can pick, destem, pit, and smoke the fruit. That’s right—smoked cherries. Although my cherry tree is still stubbornly green, Twice as Tasty’s birthday month seems the perfect time to share my newest favorite way to enjoy the tart fruit.

We expanded our smoking repertoire last year after having had such success turning smoked chilies into a spicy paste and enjoying roasted and smoked beets on numerous sandwiches, including Vegetarian Smoked-Beet Reuben. Broccoli and asparagus both received the flavorful treatment, and we continue to smoke an array of store-bought and homemade cheeses. But cherries became the icing on the cake—or should I say, the garnish of the cocktail.
Learn to make Smoked Cherries and Bourbon-Infused Smoked Cherries