Another wonderful night with amazing food and conversation along with helpful gardening and canning tips.
I’m going to post the 2 favorite recipes of the night and have to say that the sweets recipe REALLY surprised me. I was certain it was flour/wheat based which is what I always hope no one brings but this was rather sensational … can you call a “bar” recipe sensational? this one was. It is gluten free and can be easily made vegan (swap honey for agave).
Hearty Lentil & Mushroom Shepard’s Pie (vegan)
The favorite savory dish was perfect for a chilly, damp, rainy night like we had last week. It was the ideal vegan comfort food… a savory shepard’s pie. The shepard’s pie recipe was shared from an issue of Sanctuary. Sanctuary reprinted Nava Atlas’ recipe… here is the link for the Hearty Lentil & Mushroom Shepard’s Pie.
Sweet Gluten- Free Bars
- 2 cups almond flour
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 5 T coconut oil, melted
- 1/4 c honey
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 c unsweetened coconut
- 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, raw
- 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
- 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped
preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a small bowl, mix almond flour with salt, cinnamon and baking soda. In a mixing bowl combine coconut oil, honey and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture into liquid mixture. Add seeds, nuts, coconut and mix to combine. If to dry, add more coconut oil. NOTE: feel free to add chocolate chips, raisins and any other dried fruit you may like.
Grease glass baking dish. Spoon batter into the pan and press it down using the back of a spoon. Bake for 20 minutes or until done. Let cool and cut into 12 bars.
Keep refrigerated.
adapted from Suzie Carpenter
Gardening tips and links shared by Nadia Hassani. Happy garden planning!
Gardening basics
This is a recent series of articles about the most important gardening topics. Never mind it’s on a UK website, the information applies to gardening in the US as well:
http://allrecipes.co.uk/how-to/tag-7470/gardening-tips.aspx
Gardening questions
The Hortline of the Penn State Master Gardeners of Berks County is great resource:
http://extension.psu.edu/berks/programs/master-gardener/hort-hot-line
Generally, when you do research on the Internet, all websites ending in .edu are reliable resources – those are the State Universities. Just enter your keywords, for example “cucumber pests edu”, and you should find information from various Extension Services, such as
http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/pests/plant_pests/veg_fruit/hgic2207.html
Also an excellent resource is the horticulture gardening website of Cornell University:
http://blogs.cornell.edu/horticulture/
Canning and freezing
The website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation has sections on canning, freezing, drying, pickling etc.
Also, very detailed, the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning:
http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/usda/INTRO%20section%20Home%20Can.pdf
Freezing herbs with the log technique – shown here for parsley, but you can use it for other leafy herbs as well:
http://awaytogarden.com/growing-and-storing-a-year-of-parsley
One of the hottest canning websites right now:
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