Welcome to The Herbwood Kitchen
I grew up on a produce farm. My whole life, I’ve had fresh fruits and vegetables right outside my door. I could walk the rows of the fields or pull an apple straight off a tree in the orchard. For anyone who loves to cook, it doesn’t get much better than that.
Anyone who has planted a few too many tomato plants knows that, more often than not, you end up with more than you can use. That’s where canning and preserving come in. This summer, I skipped it. I went back to work after maternity leave, and with a new baby at home, I knew canning would be one thing too many. Thankfully, past me was an overachiever. Our shelves and freezer are stocked with green beans, sweet corn, jams, and salsa, enough to get us through ‘til next summer.
I tell you all of this to make a point: even with top-tier ingredients at my fingertips all summer long, fall and winter are still my favorite seasons to cook.
Maybe it’s the coziness. Maybe it’s that I can run my crockpot all day without heating up the house, or if it does warm things up, that’s a welcome change. This is the season for soup and comfort food: turkey tenderloin with gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. A deer roast shredded with onions for sandwiches. Chicken pastina soup. Zuppa toscana. Sweet BBQ meatballs on a football Sunday. The crockpot makes all of it easy.
It’s also when I do most of my baking. I recently made a batch of cheese danishes, some filled with pumpkin butter from the family farm and others with spiced apple jam I canned last year. So good.
Snacks have been on heavy rotation, too. BBQ little smokies wrapped up as pigs in blankets, plus a batch of homemade queso that I thinned out with beer to make beer cheese. Honestly, it tasted even better that way.
Between easy snacks and low-effort dinners that don’t need me hovering over the stove for an hour, we’ve been cooking at home more and cutting carryout down to once a week. That’s been good for our health and our wallets.
That’s what the Herbwood Kitchen series is all about. I’ll be sharing the recipes and preserving practices that keep our kitchen running, so home cooking feels doable even in a busy season of life.
