Tis the season...

for foraging and preservation. Here are some photos of our labors.

This is high bush cranberry sauce in the making. We harvested the berries with my herbal group. Then I took off the stems and boiled them til they were mashable. This is them going through the food mill. If we had a more heavy duty mill, we could have skipped the boiling step.

This sauce is SOUR! We add a tablespoon to a couple servings of applesauce for a hint of flavor without making it unpalatable.

We also harvested hazelnuts during the herbal apprenticeship. It took hours to get them all out of their shells. 

We added some peanuts and hickory nuts to make Linda's homemade seaweed,syrup, and nut bars. They are a bit too sweet for me, but neal loves them. I may substitute peanut butter for some of the syrup next time. Anyone have other suggestions. Linda's recipe is on her website: http://www.moonwiseherbs.com/trees-as-food-and-medicine/

Neal took on apple butter as his project. We ended up with 18 pints. Some slightly sweetened and some left tart.

Beautiful, right?

We made "meatloaf cupcakes" with sweet potato "frosting". Omg it was so delicious. Here is the website for that recipe: http://wellnessmama.com/4759/meatloaf-cupcakes/

The current project is apple leather. We skipped the lemon juice in the usual recipes because that is just for preventing browning. We also ditched the sugar. This leather is plenty sweet on its own and I don't want it to be any closer to a dessert than it already is. 

We have batches going in the dehydrator and oven. We will try storing the leather at room temp, in the fridge, and in the freezer to compare how well they last and texture.