We always bring our big cast iron skillet when we camp, but we mostly reserve it for tofu scrambles and breakfast taters on the little Coleman stove. We’ve never cooked with the cast iron over an open flame, and neither of us had ever made paella before. So, paella seemed a natural choice, to finally try our hand at high-brow campfire food.

And oh boy, it was. It really really was.




Paella is perfectly suited for campfire cooking, because it’s a one-pot meal that’s actually super easy (but feels really sophisticated). But traditional paella usually includes seafood and sausage. We chose mushrooms and soyrizo to make this vegan gluten-free version, and we couldn’t have been happier with the results. It was so good!

Credit where credit is due — this recipe is very much based on this Artichoke and Poblano Paella from Fresh Off The Grid.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup white rice, dry
2 cups vegetable broth
1 medium yellow onion
3 cloves garlic
2 poblano peppers
1 package cremini mushrooms
1 package soyrizo
1 can artichoke hearts
1/3 cup Tempranillo (or other dry red wine)
pinch of saffron
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste





Instructions
Place the cast iron skillet directly onto the grate over the campfire.

Dice the onion. Add the tablespoon of olive oil to the pan, and begin to sauté the onion.

Dice the poblanos and cremini mushrooms, and peel and crush the garlic. Add the poblano, mushroom, and garlic to the pan, and sauté until the peppers soften. Stir in 1/2 the package of soyrizo.

Add the dry rice and stir continuously for a few minutes. Once the tips of the rice begin to become translucent, add the wine. Stir and continue cooking until the wine has evaporated. Add the broth, saffron, and salt. Stir to combine all the ingredients, then allow the pan to cook undisturbed and uncovered, for 20-30 minutes.

Once the liquid is almost entirely absorbed, stir in the artichoke hearts and the other half of the soyrizo. Make sure to do this while there’s still a bit of moisture in the mix. Once everything is evenly distributed, allow the pan to continue cooking. The crispy socarrat — the best part of paella — will develop over the next few minutes. Listen for the crackling of the rice. Once you can hear it crackling, cook for 2-3 more minutes, then remove from heat.




Scrape scrape scrape and serve! The deliciously crusty bottom is best when it’s piping hot. Enjoy!

♥ ♥ ♥

Recently, I’ve been sharing photos and stories from our week-long spring break road trip adventure (part I here and part II here). It was such an incredible experience, and it really lit a fire inside me! Camping, being outside, wilderness adventures — these are some of my very favorite things. And after a long winter of hunkering down and hibernating inside, nothing feels better than untamed outdoor exploration. We’ve already done a whole other weekend camping trip with Waits, just 2 weeks after we got back from spring break. Our goal is to camp a minimum of once every month through October. *M I N I M U M*

I’m so excited!

And from the feedback I’ve been getting, y’all are just as excited as I am for camping season! I’ve continued to share my camping tips and tricks, outdoor hacks, and firepit recipes on my Instagram stories, and I’ve loved seeing all of your enthusiastic comments.

So here’s another super easy, totally delicious tried-and-true campfire recipe. Personally, I think potatoes are the perfect camping food because they’re filling and comforting after a long day of hiking or swimming or whatever it is your family likes to do in the great outdoors. Taters never fail to satisfy, and this recipe is 100% kid-approved, parent-approved, and even reader-approved. That’s right — I’ve already had a number of readers tell me they’ve made and loved this recipe!

I like to use thin-skinned potatoes, though russets will work just fine. Cut the taters into strips, roughly the size of steak fries.

Spread the potatoes on a large piece of tin foil (I actually double layered it) and add a few spoonfuls of vegan butter (coconut oil or olive oil work too, if you don’t do processed stuff).

Sprinkle the potatoes with a bit of salt and pepper, and a liberal dusting of nutritional yeast. Then, wrap it all up to make a little packet. It should be snug and well sealed.

Set the packet over the campfire. You can put it directly into the flame — you want it to get hot. Potatoes need a lot of heat to cook, so it’s okay to put it right into the flame.

Timing is tough because potatoes can be so finicky. Cook for at least 15 minutes on each side, but you may need to go 15 + minutes more after that. It all depends on the size of the potatoes and the strength of the fire.

And that’s all there is to it!

These pics are all from our camping trip in the Anza Borrego desert, which is when I first Instagrammed this recipe. But we love it so much that we made it again last weekend camping in Ojai. So trust me when I say, this simple, wholesome, no-fuss recipe does not disappoint!

♥ ♥ ♥

One of the most frequent questions was: what do you cook while camping?

So, during the trip, I shared campfire recipes in my Instagram stories. And then people asked me to share them here on the blog as well — so here we go! I think vegan campfire cooking is actually really easy, as long as you keep it simple and stick to what you love.

My family? We love broccoli!



Lay out a large piece of tin foil (I actually double layered it) and spread broccoli on top. Add a few cloves of rough-chopped garlic, salt, pepper, and a generous drizzle of olive oil. Tuck a few slices of lemon in there for good measure.



Wrap it all up to make a sort of tin foil tube. You don’t want it too tight since the goal is to let it steam. But it should be sealed.



Set it over the campfire. You can put it directly into the flame — don’t worry! It needs to get hot. Leave it for 8 minutes, then flip it and let it go 8 minutes more.



And that’s it! Unwrap the foil (be careful of that steam escaping) and you’re good to go. It’s so easy, but seriously delicious.

We served ours with traditional camping fare. It was perfect.



♥ ♥ ♥

I’m posting it! After “recipe testing” with Waits every Christmas Eve for the past five years, we’ve perfected our gluten-free vegan Meyer Lemon Loaf. And so now, for this Christmas Eve, we finally get to share it!

This wintery citrus treat has become one of my favorite Christmas traditions. We use meyers from our own miniature tree (the one I used to keep in our living room and pollinate with paint brushes when we lived in Portland!), and we spend the evening before Christmas listening to music and making a lovely lemon loaf. But it’s taken a few years (4 Christmas Eve’s, to be exact) to perfect the recipe. Gluten free and vegan can be pretty dang finicky.

You can see our progress in last year’s (2016) Christmas post. I didn’t post about Christmas in 2015, since that was the thick of grad school + wine bar, so blogging was pretty sparse back then. But the lemon loaf showed up in my Christmas photos from the year before (2014) and this little Le Love List the year before that (2013).

So yeah, this recipe has been a long time coming. And I’m so happy to finally share this special tradition, from our Christmas kitchen to yours.

Ingredients
2 cups Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Biscuit and Bread Mix (you could use another gluten free mix, but I think this one works best)
1 cup evaporated cane juice
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chia seeds
1 1/4 cups plant milk
1/2 cup canola oil
2 tablespoon meyer lemon zest
1/3 cup meyer lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Lemon Icing
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons meyer lemon juice
1 tablespoon meyer lemon zest

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375º and grease a loaf pan (I like to use coconut oil).

Zest and then juice 3-4 meyer lemons.

In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients: gluten-free flour, evaporated cane juice, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chia seeds. Once thoroughly mixed, make a “well” in the center of the dry ingredients.

In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients: plant milk, canola oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla extract. Pour the wet ingredients into the well you made in the dry ingredients, and then quickly stir to form a batter.

Pour the batter into your greased loaf pan, then bake at 375º for 50 minutes. While the loaf is baking, whisk together the ingredients to make the icing. Whisk until completely smooth and then set aside. After 50 minutes, check with a toothpick to make sure the loaf is cooked all the way through (the toothpick should come out clean). Ovens vary so you may need another 5-15 more minutes.

Allow the loaf to cool completely before icing. I usually make the loaf and the icing the night before, and then drizzle the icing over the loaf right before serving.

We serve this Meyer Lemon Loaf for breakfast every Christmas morning, but of course it’s not reserved for Christmas only. It would be a perfect tea cake, or could easily be modified into muffins. Meyer lemon is such a unique flavor, and the tart citrus combined with the sweet bread is just delightful. It’s pretty much perfect for any occasion.

Happy Holidays, friends!

♥ ♥ ♥

The inspiration for this recipe came to me rather unexpectedly — from Waits’s teacher! A few Mondays back I was dropping him off at school, and I asked her about her weekend. She told me that she’s made a delicious nasturtium pesto, and I was like “Wait, WHAT??”

I love nasturtium flowers and I eat them every spring: sprinkled in salads and wrapped up in rice paper rolls and even frozen in popsicles. I love eating the flowers, but it never really occurred to me to eat the leaves!




In past years I’ve always foraged for my nasturtiums, because they grow with great gusto around these parts, filling hillsides and creek sides and side yards and pretty much anywhere else they can think to creep.

But this year, sort of on a whim, I actually grew my own. They’re early bloomers and I appreciate a colorful entry into spring. Plus we put up that big beautiful lattice last summer, and it was just begging for some creepy crawly climbing annuals.

So anyway, when I heard “nasturtium pesto” my eyes just it up and I knew I had to veganize it!

When selecting nasturtium leaves for eating, choose the smallest, most tender ones you can find. Nasturtium is quite peppery, like arugula, so taking only the youngest shoots will ensure you don’t get a pesto that tastes “mustardy” or bitter.

If you’re foraging your nasturtium (it’s easy to do so you might as well), always make sure you wash it thoroughly before preparing — especially if it’s growing near a road.




Ingredients:

2 cups nasturtium leaves
1/2 cup avocado (or other neutral) oil
1/3 cup raw green pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
juice from 1/2 a lime
1-4 cloves garlic, to preference
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon sea salt, to taste

Instructions:

Add all of the ingredients to a food processor or blender. Process the ingredients, stopping every so often to scrape down the sides, until thoroughly combined. You want just a little bit of texture — not too clumpy, but not a paste either.

When the pesto is done, transfer it from the food processor. You can store it in a glass jar in the fridge, where it will last about a week.

Or, you know, devour it immediately.

Enjoy!

♥ ♥ ♥

How do I get myself into these things? Well, like this: I was dropping Waits off at school one morning, back in early December, and I casually asked his teacher, “Hey, I’m going to Costco this afternoon, is there anything you need?” Because they often need supplies for the classroom, like tissues and wet wipes and stuff. She thought for a second, and then all of a sudden, she got this . . . mischievous sparkle . . . in her eye.

Uh oh.

She smiled really big and she said, “Well actually, if you want to help … well here, let me show you.” And she took me over to her computer and opened up a Pinterest recipe for black bean and butternut empanadas. “You could make these vegan, right? Because we need someone to make food for the Holiday Party, and it would be great if you made vegan food because then Waits would be able to eat it too.”

And that was that. Before I knew what was happening, I was committing to making empanadas, which I had never in my life ever made before. And when I asked her how many, she looked at me, totally deadpan, and replied “Eh, like maybe a hundred?”

GULP.



And so it was that I found myself, literally the day after I turned in my final paper for my Master’s degree, holed up in my kitchen for 5 hours, making empanadas for my kid’s school’s Holiday Party. And honestly? I can’t think of a better way to spend my first day of freedom. Just puttering around in my kitchen, being a mom. I loved it!

And, everyone loved these empanadas.

Before I made them I scoured the internet, and I read a lot of vegan empanada dough recipes, as well as the feedback on those recipes. I couldn’t find one that seemed perfect or foolproof, so I sort of patched together my own, combining what seemed like the most successful elements from the most successful recipes. Here’s what I came up with, and yes — they were a huge success!



Ingredients
3 cups unbleached flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening (I use Spectrum Vegetable Shortening which is organic, non-hydrogenated, from 100% Columbian palm oil – so no Orangutan issues), at room temperature
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
3/4 cups water

Instructions
In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. Add the shortening, using two knives to cut it into the flour until small pebbles form. Then add the apple cider vinegar and water, and use your hands to knead until you get a smooth, firm dough.

Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic, and refrigerate for at least half an hour, ideally an hour or more.

While the dough is chilling, prepare your empanada filling and preheat the oven to 400º F.

Empanada fillings can be as diverse as your imagination allows! I’ve seen everything from spinach and pesto to pineapple and cinnamon. Savory, sweet, cheezy — it’s really up to you. In this case, the empanadas were for the Winter Holiday Party, so I went with a seasonally appropriate roasted butternut, black beans, caramelized onions, and fresh scallions mix. I didn’t measure anything so I don’t have an exact recipe, but that’s kind of the awesome thing about empanada filling. It’s very forgiving! Just mix up whatever sounds good (next time I’m trying vegan chorizo plus roasted green chilis) and as long as the dough works, it’s almost guaranteed to succeed.

Once you have your filling, remove the dough ball from the fridge. Pinch off a large piece (maybe a quarter of the ball) and roll it out thin on a lightly floured surface. Then, use a cup or a small bowl to cut out round disks from the dough.



Place one disk in your left (or “off” hand) palm, and spoon 1-3 tablespoons (depending on the size of the disk) into the center of the dough. Fold the disk in half to make a semi-circle pocket, using some water if necessary to seal the edge.



There are two ways to seal an empanada: the easier way, “crimped” with a fork, and the more traditional way, called “repulgue.” Repulgue is a technique of folding the dough over itself along the edge to make what looks like a two-strand braid. I figured I’d try it and even though it was my first time, I found it surprisingly quick and easy. There’s a tutorial here if you want some guidance.



Place the sealed empanadas on an unlined baking sheet. Poke each one with a fork to allow steam to escape, and brush the tops with water. Bake at 400º for 20 minutes, or until golden brown.



It took three batches of this dough to make exactly 104 mini empanadas, so this recipe yields roughly 26 small circles, or 12-15 regular-sized ones.

As I said, these were a huge crowd pleaser, and they’re something I’m definitely looking forward to making again. The dough would work well for calzones as well, which is next up on my list. Or sweet hand pies! Mmmm yes, the possibilities are endless.

And in case you were wondering, this is what 5 hours of empanada work looks like. 104 on the nose:




♥ ♥ ♥

Well would I ever!




You guys know that I don’t often take on sponsors (for all kinds of reasons), but a love of mason jars + all things preserving? Well yeah, that’s something I can whole-heartedly get behind! Can-It-Forward Day is all about celebrating the bounty of the season, and it’s happening tomorrow, this Friday July 22nd. There will be Facebook Live demos and Twitter parties and tons of info, so tune in here for more on that!




In honor of the project, I received a copy of The All New Ball Book Of Canning & Preserving. So of course, I immediately flipped to the section on fermented foods! As you guys know, I’m an avid lover of all things cultured, and I was eager to see what sort of exciting new ideas this book had to offer. There’s an easily-veganizable Worcestershire sauce that caught my eye, and a fermented Harissa hot sauce that looks absolutely amazing. But then! Serendipity! I came across a recipe for a Ginger Bug.

I’ve been dying to try my hand at making my own Ginger Bug ever since I saw Bianca from Vegan Crunk do a demo last year at Vida Vegan Con. So when I saw the recipe here, I knew I had to try it!




Ingredients:
1/3 cup sugar (organic is best), divided
1/3 cup grated unpeeled fresh organic ginger **use only organic ginger in this recipe! non-organic ginger has been irradiated and does not carry the natural yeasts and bacteria essential for fermentation
3 1/2 cups non-chlorinated water or spring water

Instructions:
You’ll need a 1-qt canning jar, measuring spoons, a small grater or microplane, and cheesecloth or a coffee filter.

Combine 2 yablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of grated ginger in the 1-qt canning jar, and then cover with the 3 1/2 cups of water. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved. Cover the jar with the cheesecloth or coffee filter, secured with a rubber band, and set aside in a cool place out of direct sunlight.





Each day for the next three days, add 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon ginger, stirring and then re-covering with the cheesecloth.

On the fourth day, remove the cheesecloth and loosely apply the canning jar lid. Each day for the next four days, add 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon ginger, stirring and then re-covering with the lid. The mixture will become very bubbly, at which point you can transfer it to the refrigerator for storage.




Lots of ginger at the bottom of the jar, and a cloudiness to the liquid, by the end of the process.

Use your Ginger Bug within 2 weeks of transferring it to the fridge. Or, you can re-activate it to keep it growing by bringing it back to room temperature and continuing to feed it for a few days as described above. Like a sourdough starter, you should be able to keep your Ginger Bug alive indefinitely this way.

You can use your Ginger Bug to make all manner of home-fermented sodas and herbal brews. Its got all the probiotic goodness of other cultured foods, and it’s absolutely delicious.

But as for Jeremy and I? Well . . . we made cocktails of course! Because that’s what you do when barware is your business.





Moscow Mules with Ginger Bug soda, hibiscus-infused agave, and homegrown mint. Garnished with my beautiful Bachelor Buttons which are growing like mad all over my yard (and they’re edible, too!).

Don’t forget, tomorrow, Friday July 22, is international Can-It-Forward Day! You can sign up and get tons of info on the Pledge Page. Also, tune in to the Facebook page for Facebook Live demos all day long, or check out the Twitter party and ask any and all canning questions throughout the day on the @BallCanning Twitter handle, by using the hashtag #canitforward.

Hope to see you there!

♥

Herbal vinegars are just about the simplest recipe ever, and they’re also completely customizable, which makes them super fun. But the best part about herbal vinegars is their nutritive power. Because vinegar is an excellent solvent (just drop a bone in vinegar and leave it for a few months and see what happens), it draws out all the minerals from whatever plant matter you choose to infuse it with. Herbal vinegars are one of the easiest, and cheapest, ways to add a boost of nutrition — especially calcium — to your daily diet!

Making herbal vinegar takes about 5 minutes of active time, plus a few weeks of waiting. Since you’re making these vinegars for their nourishing value and not just for flavor, make sure you use as much of the herb as you can — really pack it in there. That way you can extract as many minerals as possible. I can’t confirm it, but according to Susan Weed, a tablespoon of herbal vinegar can contain as much calcium as a cup of cow’s milk!

To make your own nutritive herbal vinegar, start with a clean, dry glass jar. Next, gently rinse and then pat dry your herbs. The herbs should be as fresh as possible, ideally just-picked. If you don’t have access to a garden or a Farmer’s Market for herbs, grocery store herbs will work fine, but make your vinegar the day you purchase them. You want them to be as fresh as possible.

Pack your washed, dried herbs into your clean glass jar or bottle. Use as much as you can! More herbs means more flavor, as well as more herbal medicine (if you believe in the power of plant magick) (I do).

Next, cover the herbs with your vinegar, filling all the way to the top. Make sure all the herbs are fully submerged with nothing sticking out.

You can use a variety of vinegars such as apple cider (I used my own homemade apple cider vinegar), rice wine, white wine, or red wine. It’s best not to use the super distilled white vinegar you get in the big plastic jugs — save that for cleaning.

If you’re using a mason jar or a jar with a metal lid, you may want to lay down some wax paper over the mouth of the jar before you cap it. Vinegar will rust your metal lids!

Then, tuck your tincture away out of direct sunlight, and let it marinate for a few weeks. Maybe between 4-8 weeks should be good. Yes that’s a big window — ’cause hey, this is kitchen witchery and it’s delightfully imprecise!

You may want to check in on it and give it a bit of a shake every week or so.

After a few weeks in my cupboard, my vinegars looked like this, much darker and I’ll admit, not quite as pretty. But oh, the power they now hold! Worth an aesthetic swap, to be sure.

The final step is to strain your vinegars through cheesecloth, to remove the old plant debris. I strain it into a measuring cup, then pour right back into the same, now emptied, bottle.

I’ll be enjoying these nourishing treats over the following weeks, in my salads and sprinkled over steamed greens, stirred into soups an blended into sauces. They’ll keep me perfectly pickled while my next batch of herbal vinegars are infusing. This time I’m doing blends and packing them in even tighter!

Cheers to plant magick, DIY, and medicinal food! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! ♥

We’ve been making Meadow Tea for 3 seasons now, ever since I found this nettle source here in Santa Barbara. I mean, I fell in love with nettle infusions ages ago back in Portland, but I didn’t start adding the other herbs and aromatics until a few years ago. And now, all spring and summer we get to drink this delicious, icy-cold and oh-so-refreshing, totally nutrient-rich beverage, and we just can’t get enough!

It’s easy as pie to make and I’m so excited to finally share the recipe with all of you.




Meadow tea is meant to be a “field blend”, which means you can add any of your favorite aromatic herbs to the mix. I use a variety of plants depending on what’s available, but the one herb I’m always consistent with is my beloved — the powerfully nutritive nettles! Mmmmmm nettles. They’re mineral-rich and medicinal as well, and perfect for children because they’re such a building herb. Bone-building calcium and phosphorous, blood-building iron (one of the very highest plant sources!), and tissue-building vitamin A and vitamin C. It really is a vegan kid’s powerhouse plant, and I feel awesome knowing that Waits is getting such a superhero infusion every time we make this tea.

Nettle grows across most of America, but I know that not everyone has access to this particular plant. If you can’t get your hands on nettle, some wonderful alternatives — which are all impressive nutritives in their own right — are oatstraw, red clover blossoms, and comfrey leaves (leaves only). Any of these will fill the role of nourishing nettles in this recipe.

So along with the nettle, I often add mint and chamomile, and fresh lavender when I can get it. Other options include bee balm, lemon balm, chocolate mint, hibiscus, fennel, calendula, elder flowers, and any other herb you enjoy! Each of these plants will impart their own herbal properties — for example chamomile is calming, bee balm is great for digestive issues, and peppermint is stimulating — but more importantly, they taste great too! Play around with combinations to find your own family’s favorite blend of flavors.




Making Meadow Tea (a bit of a misnomer — it’s actually an infusion) is super simple. First, get your biggest stock pot and fill it with water. Then, add clean herbs, like lots of them. Infusions are meant to be strong, so for example, in the picture above I used a full bundle of nettles, a full bundle of chamomile, a full bundle of mint, and about a half bundle of lavender.

Bring everything to a boil, stir the herbs into the boiling water, and then cover with a lid and remove the pot from heat. Now, allow the mixture to steep 4-10 hours (overnight works well, but 4 hours is fine).

When you’re done steeping, strain the liquid through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth, into a container of your choice. I store my Meadow Tea in a big 1-gallon jar in the fridge, but you can use a few quart canning jars (or whatever you happen to have).

Serve cold, with the sweetener of your choice. I like stevia drops (I make my own) or even better, add some fresh stevia leaves to the stock pot when you’re making the infusion!




Meadow Tea will keep in the fridge for up to a week. But honestly, it never lasts that long around here.

Cheers!

♥

Which means it’s apple season! And any second, the grocery store shelves will begin to swell under the weight of Honeycrisps and Jonagolds, tart Granny Smiths and crunchy Cripps Pinks. I’ve adored apple season ever since my Portland days, and although we never get quite the abundance and variety down here in the south, I still look forward to this time of year, and all the apple-y goodness it brings. Pumpkin? Meh. Apples? YEAH!

Anyway, enough with the waxing poetic about apples. The point of this post is much more pungent. Ascerbic, even. It’s vinegar. Vinegar of the apple cider variety. HOMEMADE vinegar of the apple cider variety, if we’re being precise.

Because as any DIYer/healthy living enthusiast/home herbalist/natural remedy loving/beauty product making maven worth their salt knows, apple cider vinegar (ACV) is like liquid hippie gold. We use it in our kitchens, in our cleaning, and in our medicine cabinets. We use that stuff by the gallon, and as I always like to say — “Why buy, when you can DIY?”




I’d wanted to do this project for years, and actually I did this project a whole year ago. But it’s a long process that takes a few months to complete, so by the time I was done it didn’t make much sense to post it for you guys — because apple season was already over! So instead I stashed the photos away for an entire year, just patiently biding my time as the seasons continued to cycle.

Until now.

And now, it’s apple season, which means it’s time to start prepping for this project. By which I mean, it’s time to start eating apples.

Go on – eat them!




There ya go!

Now, continue to eat them for a couple of months. Every time you eat an apple, keep the core. If you peel your apples (you heathen), then keep the skins. Throw them in a big plastic or glass container, which you’ll keep in your freezer, tightly sealed. Every time you have an apple core or some apple scraps, open that sucker up, toss in your latest additions, then close it back tight.

Do that for a few months. Do it until you have a few quarts of apple cores/apple scraps.




When you’re ready, withdraw all your apple savings from the freezer bank, and allow them to thaw. Then transfer the whole lot to an extra large (think gallon or so) glass jar, jug, or bowl. Glass only!

Cover the scraps with filtered water. I also added a splash of store bought raw, unpasteurized, unfiltered ACV, to act as a sort of culturing agent — but this is not necessary.

Anyway, you’ll want to cover the scraps with water and then keep them all submerged, similarly to when you make sauerkraut. In some cases you can use a smaller glass jar, or a plate, or a crock rock. But I like to use a simple plastic sandwich baggie filled with filtered water, and set on top. It takes the shape of whatever it sits in, so it’s sort of perfect for the job. (You can see a very illustrative picture of this, here.) However you do it, you want to make sure all the apple bits are fully submerged.

Cover the jar with a cheesecloth or coffee filter to keep the fruit flies away, then stash it in a cool place out of direct sunlight for oh, say, a month or so.




That’s basically it.

After 3-5 weeks, you’ll have homemade apple cider vinegar. You may get some white fluffies forming at the top, which is fine (I did). Just skim them off and keep going. Real mold, however, means your batch is contaminated and you’ll need to start over.

By the end of the prescribed time period, the water will have become cloudy. Vinegar! Siphon it into mason jars, poured through a wire mesh strainer to keep any apple scraps out. You may notice gelatinous globules floating in your ACV. Congratulations! That’s your mother of vinegar, very similar to a kombucha SCOBY, and it means your ACV is healthy and happy.

DIY Apple Cider Vinegar can be stored at room temperature, but it may continue to ferment away. So I like to keep one jar that I’m using in my pantry, and the rest of the jars in the back of the fridge. I made this gallon last year and I’m currently working through my last jar. So, for me and my household with moderate ACV use, this made enough to last us one year.

Not bad, I’d say, for a few leftover apple scraps and very minimal work.

So what do you think? Are you going to start freezing your cores? Will you be making some DIY home-fermented apple cider vinegar this year??

I sure hope so!

♥