Author: Michelle (Page 4 of 6)

DIY Cocktail Infusion Kit

December 18, 2022 / / 3 Comments

Are you ready to take your cocktail game to the next level? With a DIY cocktail infusion kit, you can create deliciously unique flavors at home, transforming your favorite spirits into personalized concoctions that will wow your friends and add a special touch to any gathering. Making your own infused spirits to add flair to your cocktails is simple and fun!

A mason jar with infusing orange slices, cinnamon stick and cloves

I love playing in the kitchen—being able to coax out intense or subtle flavors from high quality ingredients lets you taste the herbs and spices in new ways! Infusing spirits feels like magic to me…

And magic is always a good gift to give!

Remember to save a jar or two so you can gift yourself as well. 😉

I’ve gotten rave reviews from friends who’ve sipped the results of these infusions so far. They are simple to put together and fun to give—and better than the store-bought versions in so many ways (especially because you can pronounce all the ingredients!). Plus, they can shine bright in their presentation, or be as homey as you like!

For more holiday gift ideas visit my Gift Guide to give from the heart

Gather Ingredients for Your Cocktail Infusion Kit

Tray of dried ingredients to make DIY cocktail infusion kits. Cherries, cloves, dried orange slices, cinnamon sticks and star anise.

Similar to mixing and matching herbs for teas from dried-up leaves, infusing imparts flavors (or healing properties like in calendula oil for making salve) without the heat. Letting herbs and spices impart their flavor at room temperature takes longer—but also brings with it subtler scents and layers of flavor.

I have just started seeing these kits in a few specialty shops and farmers markets and they are not cheap! But luckily, making them at home is quite inexpensive.

If making for yourself, you can use fresh ingredients (fresh orange or apple slices and cherries), but these make really fun gifts when fully dehydrated ingredients are added to the jars. Gifting dehydrated ingredients lets the person who receives the gift choose when they want to make the infusion themselves. You can gift with a bottle of spirits or without.

Dried orange slices, cherries, and cinnamon sticks arranged on a countertop and placed in glass jars to make DIY cocktail infusion kits.

Dehydrating

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Summer Spaghetti

August 3, 2022 / / 1 Comment

Welcome to summer at its best – Fresh Garden to Table Eating that celebrates so many of our favorite flavors of the season!

This is a great flexible recipe that can be changed to what you have on hand.

We eat this is as a chilled meal during high summer. While some might call it a salad, I see it as more of a base to add other things to; from leftover grilled chicken, some sourdough slathered with pesto… We’ve also added cooked and cooled cannellini beans to this for a protein boost. If you add beans, plan to add more dressing to keep the flavors balanced.

We’ve garnished with balsamic vinegar, pesto, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, olives, or whatever Italian flavors feel right that night. The main idea with this meal is to let the flavors from the garden shine. All the herbs in this recipe are easy to grow.

You can make this with regular pasta or use zucchini noodles (zoodles) or both if you have split family preferences like we do.

Summer Spaghetti Recipe

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Harvesting, Preserving + Using Herbs

August 1, 2022 / / 9 Comments

Filling your basket with fresh picked herbs is one of those  garden routines. It is by far one of the more glamorous parts of gardening (much better than mixing compost or weeding, right!?!) so don’t skip this joyful garden practice.

Whether you are growing herbs for cooking, herbal tea or the medicine chest there are a few tips to harvesting and preserving that I’ve learned along the way…

Favorite Homestead Herbs

Here are a few of my favorite (which also happen to be the easiest) herbs to grow. Watch a recent video of me harvesting herbs growing in my garden HERE on my @forksinthedirt Instagram.

Perennial Herbs

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Beet Love

February 1, 2022 / / 3 Comments

One of my all time favorite vegetables is the humble Beet. Sometimes Beet Recipes can get a little predictable, but I’ve got a guest chef helping us keeps beets exciting today…and sharing his Beet Risotto Recipe with us!

I think my deep love for beets may be in part because it was one of those vegetables my mother NEVER cooked. So, I got to discover it all on my own and there’s something simply endearing about that, isn’t there? Their flavor and nutritional powers are pretty good reasons to love them as well…

Variety Matters!

I also love beets because you can use the entire plant, literally roots to shoots. I admit it took me a few years to fully board the ‘beet green’ bandwagon- but I am quite comfy now not giving up my seat now!

The rest of my family grew to love beet greens as a substitute for half the greens in their salads last summer. They even preferred it to spinach as the season wore on… we’ve also been enjoying frozen beet greens this winter.

But the beetroot is still up for debate with most of them.

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Lessons from the Garden

December 29, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Symmetry within the circle of our season — that’s the overarching lesson from the garden. But just one of the ways gardening teaches me year after year.

It is perfectly absurd to search for a beginning or an end to this cycle; is it when the seeds start forming, when I harvest my saved seed out of the garden, as I store it over winter, or when I plant it next spring that is “the beginning”? Is it when the food emerges, when its ripe, when I harvest, when I eat it, or when I compost the excess that is “the ending”? 

Taking into consideration the piles of compost, continuously added to by our hens, and all the other intertwined inputs and harvests from our little backyard homestead garden- I’m proud to announce that I can I find neither beginning nor end… instead I find a naturally flowing cycle that swallows its own tail year after year. A process without any one formula, rather a myriad of methods and infinite accomplishments along its way.

That being said; we all like to “take stock” every so often. The end of the calendar year, as the garden lays sleeping and frozen under the snow here in Minnesota seems a fitting time as ever. So, I’m taking a look back on this year of growing with you to share what I gleaned from my gardens. Or rather, what lessons my garden unearthed for me. I’ve added links to previous posts at the end of most topics, as it seems the lessons I learned this year are also perennial. But as with gardening- the roots grow deeper and the harvests increase with each passing year. I hope you can take a few of these ideas and let them inspire you to grow and harvest more (veggies, sustainability, peace) from your gardens this upcoming season. Let’s Dig In!

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Very Veggie Potato Leek Soup

December 1, 2021 / / 2 Comments

Soup Season is here and we couldn’t be more ready!

Leeks are a favorite late season crop that add so much depth of flavor to everything they touch, especially soup! We had a bumper crop this year so I’m excited to experiment with leeks this winter…

Straight up Potato Leek soup is divine, so I wasn’t sure if I should mess with it… but I did because I can’t help hiding extra veggies in all my meals.

So, here’s a soup that’s every bit as delicious with some added protein and veggie power. But it all starts with bacon, so don’t worry, this is definitely scores high on the flavor meter.

Ingredients

Bacon- 1 lb locally raised
Leeks- Three large or four medium leeks
Thyme-  few fresh sprigs or 2 tsp dry
Bay Leaf- 1-2
Potatoes- 4 medium-sized, peeled and cubed
Cauliflower- half to a full head, cut up
(or 2 cups Zucchini, shredded)
Any White Beans- ~ 1 cup
Chicken Stock- 3-4 Cups
Salt + White Pepper to taste
2 Tbsp Cream Cheese – optional

Directions

Soak and cook beans until soft (or used canned). Fry the bacon on low until crispy. Set bacon to drain. Use bacon fat to sauté leeks, on medium low for 5-7 minutes. Add in potatoes, cauliflower or zucchini, thyme and bay leaves. Pour in chicken stock. Simmer until everything is well cooked, 20+ minutes. Fish out bay leaf and thyme sprigs. Add in cream cheese. Use an immersion blender (or blender) to puree soup, or leave chunky if preferred.

Garnish with cream, microgreens, fried leeks, bacon, kale chips, etc… Delicious with homemade sourdough!

I’ve got more Forks in the Dirt “Veggie Heavy” Recipes over on my RECIPES PAGE. I hope you love this soup as much as we do, let me know what you think of the added cauliflower and white beans.

Dig In,

Michelle

Forks in the Dirt Holiday Gift Guide

November 25, 2021 / / 0 Comments

**Updated November 2024**

In typical Forks in the Dirt fashion, I have gift ideas for you that cover a lot of ground. You could even say gifts from the ground up. So, here’s my lovingly curated, Mix + Match, Handmade, Local, Always Learning + Eco Friendly Holiday Gift Guide.

Homemade

Calendula Salve:
Calendula Salve is a super healing and soothing balm great for cold northern winters. I make it with my homegrown Calendula Resina, but Mountain Rose herbs has high quality herbal products.

Soap:
I love gifting homemade soaps, especially when it contains some of my own floral or herbal infused oils! I keep it simple and usually have make the hot process soap. We go over this recipe in detail in our book, Small-Scale Homesteading.

DIY Cocktail Infusing Kits:
These are super simple to make but are really a big impact gift. The recipes I share in THIS ARTICLE are some of my favorite, but you can get creative – just don’t forget to make a few extra for yourself! All recipes can be made into N/A options.


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Welcome to the 5th Annual White Bear Lake Winter Farmers Market!

November 2, 2021 / / 0 Comments
The welcome table at last year’s Farmers Market

We’re so ready to kick off this White Bear Lake Winter Farmers Market season. What started small has grown to be a much anticipated community-wide event each winter.

This season’s market dates are set for November 13 th , December 11th and January 8th. The markets will run 10am to 2pm outdoors, right in front of Tamarack Nature Center. Bringing together local farmers, makers and community is the driving force behind the event- which continues to evolve each year.

Winter Farmers Market Haul!

Last year because of Covid, we moved the event outside and you, the community, didn’t skip a beat! Local food lovers don’t seem to mind an outdoor event, and with Ramsey County Park buildings still closed, we’ll be staying outside again this year. Of course, we’re making it extra cozy, with free hot apple cider from Pine Tree Apple Orchards, and a warming fire pit courtesy of Tamarack Nature Center.  

Market Details

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Digging in to Farm to Table

October 3, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Farm to Table means different things to different people. But everywhere I look people are digging into the backstory of their food. I see more of us asking questions about local, organic, sustainable and regenerative. What I don’t often hear are questions about the farm families that bring us that food. So, when the Twin Cities Mom Collective invited me to talk with some women farmers of Common Ground Minnesota, I was all in.

The two organizations recently brought together local moms like myself with Minnesota farm women to ‘talk turkey’ and corn, soybeans, beef production, etc…

The Setting

We met at the iconic “Farm at the Arb” which has been restored to all its glory. The barn itself is rustic chic and the gathering lawns, landscaping and vistas put it over the top! As stunning as the Farm is, it is only one historic chapter in the story of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum (the Arb).  

The University of Minnesota has managed the Arb’s 1,200 acres since 1958. It boasts seemingly endless display gardens, plants, tree and shrub collections and educational offerings. This place is a mecca of sorts for Midwest gardeners and nature lovers alike.

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Patty Pan Lasagna

October 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Basket of just picked Patty Pan

Everyone loves Lasagna, right!? Here’s my veggie-heavy version. And the trick is using larger (what people may think of as past their prime) Patty Pan squash.

Patty Who?

Patty Pan squash are a prolific heirloom variety that I think of something between a summer and winter squash. The firmness and dense texture of these squash make for a much closer “faux pasta” than regular summer squash! I love all kinds of squash, especially zucchini, and have a dedicated blog all about different ways to use those beauties in Zucchini a Zillion Ways.

The plants themselves are large, but not as big as some typical zucchini plants can get. I got my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, “White Scallop”.

So how does a big ole squash become pasta-ish? Welcome my trusty mandolin. I use this simple kitchen appliance to slice and shred and it makes my veggie loving life so much easier! From beet chips to slaw I use this almost everyday. A note of caution, the blades are VERY sharp. Most mandolin packages come with a ‘guide’ or shield of some sort, I suggest using that for whenever you get even a little close to the slicing blade.

VIDEO: watch a mandolin slicing patty pan in action

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