Weekly Column: Preserving the season's harvest

Preserving the season’s harvest

Growing your own food is a great pastime because it gets people outside, provides exercise, puts you in tune with the changing seasons, and rewards you with delicious produce in the end. While just a hobby for most nowadays, it wasn’t that long ago that local families relied on their gardens to provide the bulk of their winter food supply. Although not usually a necessity anymore, given the year-round selection in grocery stores, many people still preserve their garden’s bounty so they can enjoy the fruits of their labour in the winter months.

Not a gardener? No problem. Trot yourself down to your local farmer's market and meet the folks that grow good food. You may feel that homegrown food is pricier than that at the grocery store, and maybe it is. But consider the labour that goes into growing, cleaning and setting up for a local sale. Consider that what you purchase has been locally grown and picked fresh within the last day or so. Compare this with grocery store produce that has been picked too early and trucked in from out of the country. There’s no comparison in flavour or quality, and if you would splurge on an ice cream cone don’t deny yourself the healthy pleasure of fresh vegetables. Like the saying goes “you can pay your farmer now or your doctor later”.

If you’re lucky enough to find yourself with an excess of fresh food and aren’t interested in preserving, don’t let it spoil on the counter if you can’t eat it all. Share with your neighbours, trade for other vegetables, or donate the surplus to a food bank so that it can be enjoyed at a free community meal.

Getting started

Even if you’ve never preserved food, there’s likely a method that will suit your tastes and abilities. Check out recipe books at the library or ask veteran cooks for their favourites. Be wary of what you find online: use only trusted sources that follow USDA guidelines. Pickling and preserving is not difficult but don’t take chances with botulism or spoiling your food.

slow roasting tomatoes

The Company’s Coming: Preserves cookbook by local author Jean Paré is a great starting point for novice cooks and don’t forget to watch for cookbooks at used bookstores and thrift shops. While you’re thrifting, keep an eye out for boxes of good quality jars intended to withstand the heat and pressure of canning. Frugal home canners will note that the cost of jars is ever on the rise. At around $10 for a dozen quart sealers, it’s not cheap to start canning unless you can source your supplies more affordably.  You can buy lids and sealer rings separately for a substantial savings over the jars and lids you find at the grocery store at this time of year.

 If you’re cutting back on how much you preserve as you get older, perhaps you can think of someone that would appreciate some of your extra canning supplies. Likewise, if you’ve been given food in jars kindly wash and return them to the source in hopes that you might get lucky twice.

The price of sugar usually skyrockets when it’s time to make pickles and jams. Buy extra when you see it on sale, or even at regular price because it’s bound to get higher all season. Stock up on turmeric, mustard seed and other spices in the ethnic food aisle rather than the basic spices section—the bags are bigger and usually much cheaper.

A healthier option

Many would argue that the process of first growing, then preserving, their own food is of no savings at all once you consider your time and effort. On one hand, this is true. Buying canned vegetables and store bought pickles is quick and easy, and sometimes cheap. But if a person truly enjoys the time spent outdoors working in the fresh air and looks at it as a pastime that prevents costlier diversions, the benefits soon outweigh the costs.

Knowing what goes into the food your family eats has never been more important with chemicals and BPA so prevalent in commercially made products. Home preservation is another way people can take control of their diets and budget. There’s growing interest in the health benefits of fermented foods and the simple pleasure of handling your food from garden to table. Watch for deals on your canning supplies and enjoy the flavours of summer year-round for less.

On the Subject of Storage

I do love making salsa, chutney, relish, pickles and jams. I think I made my first batch of my granny's zucchini relish in my early 20's and I've enjoyed the autumn ritual of preserving every year since.

The problem, for me, is what to do with the jars in the meantime. In our old house there was a big cabinet in the cellar that held everything I made and all the empty jars and lids as well. In this house, I'm still finding places to keep boxes of jars--so far I've resisted putting them in the attic of the garage because I dread hiking them up and down those stairs and going up there to search for jars when I want them. But it's possible that they will end up there. Ideally, I'd love a huge old wardrobe (Pinterest image below) or hoosier that could go in my craft room and hold all my canning supplies and fabric. SIGH. Another thing to save for :)

Image from Pinterest

While I'm on the subject, I really like that old bed frame in the picture, too!

In the meantime, I have a spot in the basement for stockpiled food and my canning. It is not ideal and I'm glad that kids have not knocked anything down and broken jars. This weekend we did a thorough and much overdue cleaning of the basement. Because we have a wood stove down there it gets dusty and I haven't stayed on top of it. I took a picture midway through cleaning and reorganizing.

Oy! The dust! There is a gun safe with egg cartons stacked on it. The cabinet that holds most of the
canned goods and more egg cartons (we save them for my mom who has laying hens).
To the right is a Round Up sprayer (that has a bit of vinegar in it from last year's attempts at weed control).
Next to that is the worm bin.

Across from that area, and at the bottom of the stairs, is a small fridge where we keep extra milk,
eggs, drinks and excess fruit or veg. It is so handy to have the extra space especially at Christmas!
Between that fridge and the chest freezer is a small, inadequate shelf where I keep stockpiled coffee,
soup, vinegar, flour and the like.

It feels very good to go to a nice clean and organized basement. Although I do wish for a beautiful antique to house all my odds and ends, there is nothing wrong with what I have. If the right piece comes along at the right price (and we still have an income) there is nothing stopping me from getting a nice wardrobe with shelves. But there is no rush.

I am tempted to take over the space under the stairs because it would fit all my stockpiled food and be a dark, cool place for potatoes and root vegetables this winter, but I dedicated that space to kids and toys when I painted the bat tunnel. In another year or two I might reclaim that space because, as you can see below, what I'm doing now with potatoes is not working :(.

Storing potatoes in a warm room near a window doesn't work!

I always like seeing how others store their preserves and garden harvests. Do you have space to store what comes out of your garden, and where do you keep your jars and lids when not in use? And what about all that food you've preserved?

2015 Tally of Preserves

It has long been my goal to keep better records of what I grow (always too busy planting to keep track of what gets planted) and what I harvest (weighing what I bring in from the garden sounds simple until I am rushing out to pick greens and supper is late, blah, blah, blah). Maybe next year I will be more organized and keep a better record, but for this year I have concentrated on an overall tally of what I was able to preserve through canning and freezing.

I thought that I would include this spring's maple syrup, our first ever. Because it was a novelty to most of our friends we gave away several tiny taste-test size jars and had a couple of half-pints for the kids to have on pancakes and for me to use in bread. I saved 2 quarts in hopes that the weather will cooperate and we can do maple taffy in the snow at each of our son's birthday parties (January and March). Last year we had tobogganing and horse-drawn sleigh rides for both and the weather was nice. I hope we are as lucky this year :)

I was lucky to be invited to pick fruit with a friend in a lovely yard this summer. There we picked enough plums for good eating plus a bit of plum sauce (seriously, removing the pits was so time-consuming!).

My boys enjoyed pitting cherries, though, and were a great help. The wild saskatoons were wonderful this year and we discovered just how many grow right here in our yard.

My garden was a dismal failure by some standards. We had a drought until July and the scorching heat and my inconsistent watering did not enable much that I planted to germinate. Some things came later and I was surprised how much lettuce I ended up with. Pumpkins continued to bloom until frost without ever producing fruit larger than a golf ball--terribly disappointing because I successfully started the plants from seed! If anyone has pointers on growing pumpkins I would appreciate some advice!

Like most years, though, what my garden lacked was supplemented by the generosity of my mom and neighbours. A friend's mom gave me half a box of apples which I split with my mom and made apple pie filling with. I was given cucumbers and still managed to make enough pickles for our winter eating. My aunt gave us carrots and I saved enough to make a treat jar of pickled carrots for Husband to enjoy over the Christmas holidays. In many ways the scarcity of the pickles makes us savour them more and it is always a shame to throw out uneaten ones when you have gone to so much work.
Every year I plan to grow more tomatoes and more peppers for even more salsa, but like the pickles it is a shame to see it go to waste. So this year I have concentrated more on slow roasting and freezing for sauce and know that the salsa I have made for ourselves and as gifts will be all the more special because there is less of it.

So here it is, a tally of what I have "put up" from my garden, yard, and generous gifts from others:

2015 Preserves

2 qt saskatoon pie filling
2 x ziploc freezer bag of berries
2 qt rhubarb/saskatoon "fruit" for our elderly neighbour
3 qt cherries "fruit"
3 qt cherry pie filling
2 qt apple pie filling

2 pints pickled beets
1 quart dilly beans
5 pints hot chili chutney
3 1/2 pints raspberry jam
3 pints million dollar relish
5 1/2 quarts bread and butter pickles
2 qt + 1 pint sweet heat salsa plus 7 half pints of sweet heat salsa for gifts
4 qt hot salsa
6 qt canned whole tomatoes
1 qt dilled carrots
2 qt dill pickles
5 ziploc freezer bags of roasted tomatoes (so far). Tomatoes still ripening in the basement

1 laundry basket of potatoes minus what we ate fresh from the garden. Red potatoes were scabby but large, white potatoes were excellent.

Perhaps most exciting in this year's food production were the two apples that our 2 year old honeycrisp apple tree produced. The fruit was huge, crisp and juicy, and although there were only two apples we watched them grow and shared them as a family. We are very hopeful that the tree will provide us with plenty of beautiful apples in years to come.

Getting Ready

Husband and I are going on a little trip. We will only be gone a few days but I didn't want my mom to worry about covering my tomatoes if it freezes, so I picked the big ones with my little helper the other day. I roasted the ripe ones down into a sauce with some garlic, peppers and onions and froze it.

I am so sad to say that my cucumbers didn't produce this year. I have only had a handful of my own cucumbers. The first planting either froze or didn't germinate in the hot dry weather (I thought some came up but they immediately disappeared. Did they get eaten? I suspect a late frost) At any rate, my second planting was too little, too late, and I am paying for it now. Events like this really help me prioritize for next year: one of our favorite things over the holidays is to crack open some pickles from the garden when we have company. Whether it is pickled carrots, beets or, my favorite, bread and butter pickles with sausage and cheese and crackers, it is a treat that we will really miss this year. I did a couple pints of beets already (did anyone know that sheep love beets? We turned our girls out to graze the other day and they ate the beet tops AND the tops off half my beets!). Since I only managed to grow a handful of carrots despite a second planting, I will probably only do up a quart or two of dilled carrots (the carrots given to us by our neighbour and my aunt). SIGH. Once again, I am grateful that my family does not count on my gardening skills for their survival.

When we return from our little getaway I will begin my season of preserving and cleaning up the garden. Every year I vow to plant more onions and, although I did this year, I think we just ate more and thus there will be no extras leftover for winter. Our neighbour sent over a nice assortment of things from his garden and the size of his onions made me giggle--If I ever grow onions that big I will officially call myself a gardener.

At the moment I am making a half-batch of million dollar relish from Jean Pare's Company's Coming Preserves (this book is a Western Canadian favorite and one that you would probably find in most farm kitchens). The cucumbers we got from the neighbour were large for pickling and we won't get them ate before we go--a half batch is actually just right to get us through the winter and next summer's burger/hotdog season.

Excuse the glare on the cover of the book! I am never comfortable sharing someone else's recipe unless it is in such an obscure old book or handed down by family...I recommend anyone interested in preserving watch for this book and purchase it. You will get your money's worth. The recipes are no-nonsense and tested by thousands of farm women year after year. I am skeptical of some recipes found online (Pinterest!) and when it comes to preserves I think it wise to stick to reliable, published and safe recipes for you and your family.

There isn't much garden produce left to deal with before we go. I better enjoy my time to relax because I will be returning to a basement full of ripening tomatoes and the salsa making will begin!

Foraging in Our Backyard

Foraging for food is a concept that, to me, is becoming more trendy and mainstream these days. Even the term "foraging" is more stylish than "picking berries". When I was young it was something most farm women did out of necessity to keep sweet preserves throughout the winter months. We gorged on pies and bowls of fruit with cream and sugar before the long hot days of jam-making made the house too hot and the black flies insufferable. I should confess that I hated picking berries when I was young (much like I detested gardening....hmmm...perhaps my lifestyle is a return to the values my parents taught us back then). I am interested in learning to identify mushrooms so we can someday forage for them, but for now I'll settle for the saskatoon bushes we are lucky to have growing wild right here in our yard.

Saskatoon berries are similar to blueberries and this happens to be a great year for them. We are making the effort to freeze and preserve plenty so that we won't resort to buying blueberries fresh in the grocery store (they are tasteless anyways) or even the frozen bags that are trucked across the country. The few hours of work should save us money while also making use of wild, organic, local food that is literally on my doorstep.

So what to do when you have a glut of any particular crop? First I search through my granny's old recipe books, because they were compiled by prairie farm women who ate seasonally. A classic on the Canadian prairie is the Jean Pare Preserves cookbook, where I eventually chose the recipe for "fruit" as requested by our elderly neighbour. He described to me how his mother used to combine rhubarb and saskatoons in quart sealers.

I am not sure I got it right but I gave it a try and sent them over with Husband along with some saskatoon muffins (recipe adapted from my America's Test Kitchen Cookbook).

I also concocted a saskatoon berry syrup for the boys to have over pancakes.

I found a recipe for saskatoon sauce so I made that and froze the sauce to serve over cake this winter or use as pie filling or in muffins. All in all, I feel like we have made good use of the free wild berries on our land. I have 2 large ziplock bags of berries frozen already, and another 3 gallons of berries to do something with tomorrow. We haven't begun to put a dent in the berry supply, so I might do some jam for small gifts at Christmas. Have you got access to wild berries where you live? If so, what is your favourite way to preserve them?

The Garden That Didn't Grow

We are having a hot dry summer here along the Alberta/Saskatchewan border. Today we had temperatures around 30C and had a late afternoon thunderstorm which brought high winds and a bit of hail. Our yard received one inch plus two tenths or rainfall, while 4 miles away my parents had about half an inch. We are glad to have had the moisture and all my rain barrels are overflowing. 

The hot dry summer has had me asking, what would I do 100 years ago if it were this dry and my garden didn't grow? Surely it happened from time to time. Did families go hungry? Absolutely. Were some forced to town or onto the generosity of family? Undoubtedly. Back then if a person in the country could not or did not produce their own stores of food they could not last. Growing and storing enough food for one's family and one's livestock was the real difference between success and failure on the prairies. Nowadays, if you have a total crop failure such as I have had with carrots, peas, lettuce, spinach, kale, SIGH, you might trade with a neighbour for some of the things you have plenty of (so far, that would be onions), try the farmer's market, or you just say to heck with it and count on the grocery store for your missing produce. But this all has me thinking, 100 years ago on this piece of land I would be starting to feel a bit desperate.

There are some factors that would be different, of course. I would likely have quadrupled the amount of potatoes I had planted. I would have relied heavily on crops like turnip, pumpkin, squash and cabbage, and I would have a root cellar in which to keep them all. But here in my 2015 first-world-home, I have an entire area dedicated to water and heat loving tomatoes and peppers. I reserved one raised bed for my children to plant, and I have large spaces that are purely ornamental. My apple tree has 2 apples on it this year and the pear pollinator has died. I put in 10 raspberry canes last year but they immediately filled in with weeds and I have decided if they die it is probably a good thing. Something has eaten the strawberries before I can get to them, and I have 4 or 5 varieties of sunflowers planted for the birds and our pure enjoyment. It is obvious that this garden is not meant to sustain us through our cold 6-7 month long winter. But what if it had to?

Above, one raised bed that has produced nothing besides a couple sunflowers, some nasturtiums, and a couple bean plants. 

Below, sunflowers bent over from the driving wind and rain. I'm sure they will bounce back, but I must rethink how much of my garden is used to grow things not specifically meant to feed this family through the winter. 

I did plant carrots and greens and peas and I reseeded cucumbers, beets and peas when it didn't look good. The carrots and greens seem to be a write-off and there are so far only enough beets for a couple meals. The cucs are up but I am wondering what my yield will be, and I am thinking that this should be my last year of using the grocery store as my back up plan. Next year I hope to have space prepared to plant more and harvest more than I need, with the aim to get my family through the year on what we can grow ourselves. Of course this is not a revelation to many who garden. But for me it is time to step up and grow/harvest/preserve as though it is my only option. I am lucky enough to have the land, I am healthy enough to do the work, and I want to be able to make it happen in case the day ever comes where we must be totally self-reliant. Do you grow your annual supply of any one fruit or vegetable?

Worth a Try

I follow the blog Little Home in the Country and have been introduced by Sherri to the Ripe Near Me initiative. What a great idea! Any gardener has (hopefully) experienced an excess of produce at one time or another. This site seems like a fabulous way to swap or sell that crop, and meet like-minded folks in your own community at the same time. Even if you are not a gardener, it is a way to locate locally grown food.

The site is new and there are (as yet) no members in my area. Hopefully we can get the word out and, by the time harvest rolls around, share some of our garden's bounty!

Happy gardening!

Cukes and Zukes

Normally this is a time of bounty in my own garden, but with the move this year we decided against trying to start a garden. In hindsight it was the right things to do--it was hard enough to help my mom with hers and I would never have gotten over here with the kids to do much. Luckily, my friend gave me some cucumbers and mom has too many zucchini (is there ever just the right amount of zucchini?) so I'm managing to do some pickling and thought I would share a recipe or two.

I make these sweet sliced pickles every year. We love them at Christmas with meat, cheese and crackers, and they are great in a sandwich or on a burger. I doubled my batch because my year and a half old boy devours pickles and I think we will be needing alot more this year! The Million Dollar Pickles recipe is from Jean Pare's Company's Coming: Preserves.

Million Dollar Pickles

6 cups thinly sliced cucumber, with peel

3 Tbsp coarse pickling salt

2 cups water

Place cukes in bowl. Stir salt into water until dissolved. Pour over cukes and add more water to cover. Cover and let stand overnight on counter, then drain and turn into large saucepan.

3 cups (approx) white vinegar, enough to cover cukes

2 cups sliced onion

2 green peppers, seeded and chopped

3 cups granulated sugar

1 tsp turmeric

4 1/2 oz pimiento

To cucumbers, add vinegar, onion, peppers, sugar and turmeric. Heat on medium-high, uncovered, stirring often until mixture comes just to a boil. Stir in pimiento. Using a slotted spoon, pack hot sterilized pint jars with vegetables to within 1 inch (2.5 cms) of top. Fill with hot syrup to within 1/2 inch (1 cm) of top. Place sterilized metal lids on jars and screw metal bands on securely. For added assurance against spoilage you may choose to process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Makes 4 pints.

Another wonderful recipe in the same cookbook is the Million Dollar Relish. I may use up the rest of my cucumbers in a batch--I'm waiting on my gas stove and perhaps hubby to return home and busy the children for an afternoon! If you like relish and are looking for a use for that glut of zucchini, there's a great recipe here

I receive the West Coast Seeds Newsletter , where I read the next recipe. I have not tested this, but with the amount of zukes we have hanging around I thought it would be worth a try. I'm passing it on so if you try and like it, please let me know!

1 medium zucchini, peeled, seeded, sliced less than 1/2 cm (1/4 inch) thick

1/2 cup each vinegar and water

3 Tbsp olive oil

sea salt to taste

After slicing the zucchini, soak it in vinegar/water solution overnight. Drain and pat lightly dry, then toss in olive oil with sea salt. Spread on baking sheet, sprinkle small amount more salt, and bake on lowest oven setting until crisp.

Once my gas oven is up and running I hope these will become a favorite treat for my kids, as kale chips did last year. Do you have favorite ways to use up excess zucchinis at this time of year?

The Kindness of Strangers

Despite my best intentions to stop griping about the weather, we are digging out from under a winter storm that brought 60 km/hr winds and dangerous roads to the whole region. In today's high-tech world it is easy to feel confident out travelling. Armed with a cell phone, most people don't worry about venturing out in wild weather. Here at our house we have been reminded that nature is boss.

I've talked about Husband being away right now. He is staying in a hotel about an hour and a half drive from the job. On Wednesday night, after a very windy day, he left work and was called: a co-worker is stuck, can you pull him out? Before Husband even got to the co-worker he pulled out a farmer and his wife that lived nearby. When he found his co-worker he also pulled him out of the snow. The roads were drifted so bad that snow was packing in around the engine of the truck. Within an hour and a half Husband had pulled out more vehicles and become stuck himself, along with his co-worker, and along with the rest of the crew of men. An hour and a half later a tractor arrived, pulling out vehicle after vehicle. In fact, tractors were plowing everywhere attempting to open roads that people were stuck on. By 10 pm the crew of men were all "unstuck" and safely invited into a farmer's home. They were fed a hot meal and provided a warm bed. Between the extended family and a couple different homes, everyone slept inside and was safe from the storm.

During the whole ordeal cell phones kept everyone communicating and no one got lost or left behind. But Mother Nature got to flex her muscles and remind us that being able to call for help does not mean help can get to you. Tractors were getting stuck in the snow while plowing--road graders were getting stuck!--and it was very lucky that the whole lot of them didn't end up having to sleep in their vehicles. Husband was soaked from pulling people out and had a bag of cheezies with him to eat. It would have been a cold, uncomfortable night and a very long day today. Instead, he slept in a bed and woke up to a home-cooked meal...which brings me to my point: How comfortable are we helping strangers? Would we let them into our homes? Feed them? Let them sleep over? It's a wonderful feeling to know there are people left that will do all of the above. Makes me think about karma, or how "what goes around comes around". Husband never passes a vehicle in trouble without stopping to help. That night he was helped. We live in a part of the world where tsunamis and earthquakes and famines are only on the news, but we still have to be prepared for what nature can throw us: namely cold weather and bad roads. I bet I am not ignored the next time I hound Husband about keeping warm emergency clothing in his truck!

In my vehicle I keep: booster cables, gas line anti-freeze, warm socks, mitts, toque, and a homemade jean blanket that I use in summer on the beach, in winter "just in case". When it is very cold I either wear or bring along snow boots. Now that I have children I don't set out on the highway if it is too cold, or I make sure I have diapers etc in case we have to stay over. After this storm I will be adding candles and matches to my winter kit.

Having so many people stranded in this storm made me think also of what I keep in my pantry and freezer. Because we are such a distance from town I keep extra, especially during the winter. In the summer I rely on my garden as well. At any time I probably could host an extra 10-15 people for a meal. It is more likely, though, that we could simply be snowed in with bad roads in every direction (we've sure had enough of that this year!). In that case, I will continue what I've been doing: extra non-perishables and frozen vegetables, ingredients on-hand to bake bread/cookies, in case we are without fresh food for awhile.

Do you stockpile food for the winter? Have you got any tips on keeping busy while stuck in a storm?

Granny's Zucchini Relish

I enjoy the process of pickling and canning more than I enjoy eating the final product. A pickle on a burger is okay, and I love my homemade summer sausage with a cheese, cracker and pickle tray at Christmas, but I've never stood at the counter and polished off a jar of dilled carrots. Husband has. So the arrangement works well, I get to do something I enjoy and he equally enjoys the results.

Ever since my granny gave me her zucchini relish recipe when I was about 20, I have loved making relish and pickling. But since having kids, especially the little crawly-type ones that are into things, I have found relish to require too many steps (so I don't have a picture of the relish to share). I've stuck to just pickles and jam the last couple of years. Next year I intend to make relish again--the boys will be that much older and we will be in the country where they can play on the deck or lawn where I can see them. Although this is a sleepy town our yard is not fenced so they haven't had the freedom to play without me right beside them.

Granny's zucchini relish is a nice golden colour and just sweet enough in a sandwich...well, it is one of my very favourites. I don't make it or eat it without remembering getting it from her basement--how grampa helped her with the canning because her arthritic hands could no longer turn the rings. I think the type of teamwork that older couples like that use to stay independent in their own homes is a real lesson to us. It takes commitment and love to help each other fill the gaps in our capabilities, and you don't need to be a senior citizen to admit that. They were married 58 years when grampa passed away in 2003. Granny is now immobilized due to a stroke this past summer. I take some comfort in keeping her old recipes alive, and in passing them on for other families to enjoy. I have several of her recipe books and many handwritten recipes as well. Some of the handwritten recipes are duplicates, so I plan to decoupage a memory box for my mom using the recipes and notes that are in granny's handwriting. I will also pass on some other favourites as time goes on, but for now:

Granny's Zucchini Relish: 

• 12 cups ground zucchini (I peel it and remove seeds)
• 4 large onions, chopped
• 2 green peppers, chopped
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 1/2 cup coarse pickling salt

Let stand overnight, rinse well, transfer to large pot, then:

• Add 3 cups vinegar
• 4 cups white sugar
• 3 Tbsp cornstarch
• 2 tbsp mustard seed
• 2 tsp turmeric
• Boil 20 minutes and put into hot, sterile jars

I hope you try this recipe when you are searching for things to do with your zucchini glut next fall. What do you do with your zucchini crop? Are you fortunate enough to have inherited family recipes? If so, what ones, and have you done anything special with them?