Making pulled molasses taffy for St. Catherine's Day is an old French-Canadian tradition that's fun for the whole family. Growing up I would make these taffies at elementary school on November 25th, the feast of St. Catherine. I loved seeing the brown taffy turn...
For the longest time, I would do everything possible to avoid eating winter fruit cake. I found the cloyingly sweet cake with its fluorescent candied fruit strange and unpalatable. To be fair, I never had the opportunity to eat a traditional winter fruit cake until...
I have been obsessed with dandelions this spring. We've been using dandelions to create art, decorate our nature table and fill our bellies. There have been plenty of dandelion "fails" along the way... I will spare you the drama of my dandelion play dough. However,...
Recipe originally posted on October 1, 2011. It's been six years since I've shared my Bodacious Beet and Cabbage Soup recipe on this blog. It was a chilly autumn day in the northern interior of British Columbia and my fridge was bursting with beets. I had two little...
The Best Strawberry Ice Cream by Josée Bergeron the Backwoods Mama. A summer favourite!
Cherry-apple fruit leather is easy to make. This recipe, if you can call it that, has two ingredients: cherries and unsweetened apple sauce. Apple sauce add sweetness and pectin to the puree which helps with the flavour and texture of this fruit leather. Apple-Cherry...
Earlier this week our learning circle gathered to make felt lanterns for the winter solstice. It was an exciting and wet activity, next time I will remind everyone to bring an extra change of clothing. Our lanterns turned out a little misshapen with some thin spots,...
A few years ago I ate my first Raincoast Crisp and it was love at first bite. Unfortunately my budget doesn't allow for purchasing these delicious, albeit expensive, artisan crackers very often. So I went in search for a recipe that would allow me to make my own...
The three most common ways of preserving basil are dehydrating, curing and freezing. It's worth considering how you plan to use the basil before preserving it or you could experiment with each way to discover what you prefer. Dehydrating basil is inexpensive and space...
Homemade pizza is where it's at around here. It's the perfect vessel for summer garden vegetables, homemade tomato sauce and plenty of cheese. But delicious pizza toppings cannot stand alone, they need the support of a chewy, crispy, yet tender pizza crust and I have,...
A few days ago I was lamenting the fact that I had to thin the baby beets in my garden. Too attached to compost the baby beets I carefully washed them and stored them in the fridge. The baby beet greens finally made their appearance on a delicious baby beet greens and...
Once every few months I have a surplus of avocados. It's a great problem to have, one that I wish happened more often. Since I hate wasting food I have devised an easy way for using up lots of avocado very quickly: chocolate avocado mousse. This mousse...
When it comes to the world of sourdough bread the variations are endless. Different kneading techniques, rising times, flours, water amounts... can lead to varying results. I have been studying Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's sourdough technique in How to Make Bread which has...
For those of you that want to make sourdough bread but are too nervous to try, I want to encourage you to take the leap. Sourdough bread is much healthier than conventional store bought bread because the natural leaven in sourdough makes more minerals available as...
This post would be better titled: How to get your weekly workout while making whole wheat sourdough bread. It makes for a long title so I opted for the simpler one above.I don't buy ground whole wheat because it loses it's nutritional value and goes rancid...
Part 1: Sourdough Bread Recipe: First Feeding (Day 1)Part 2: Sourdough Bread Recipe: More Feeding (Day 2)This is a basic formula for making three loaves of sourdough bread using all-purpose flour. Use this recipe as a starting point for exploring the world of...