As a young girl, my great Aunt Rosemary was the one woman who I wanted to emulate the most. She had a well-kept home, a huge garden, lots of land, honey bees, fruit trees, a pond stocked full of catfish, berry bushes, and was a great cook. We loved the Sunday afternoons after church spent at Aunt Rosemary & Uncle Alton’s house, eating one of her delicious meals that came mostly from their land. She was famous for her creamed corn and cole slaw.

A few years ago, she gave me a corn cutter and showed me how to make her recipe for creamed corn. Try as I might, I can’t get mine to taste quite as good as hers. There is something about eating in her kitchen and knowing it was made by the corn that grew in her garden, that made hers taste extra special.

She canned most of the produce from they grew and froze the rest. I learned how to can like her but never had a freezer until a few years ago. I am so glad we bought it as it has come in handy more times than I can count. Canning is hard, hot work; throwing extra food into a couple of freezer bags and storing it in a freezer is not. Maybe that’s why I love mine so much. Less work.

We ran out of our vanilla bean infused strawberry jam back in late November, and today while looking in the larder, my oldest son was disappointed to find that we had none for his bread. It was then that I remembered I still had several bags of perfectly preserved strawberries put up in the freezer. I spent the afternoon making up 22 half- pints of that tasty goodness. When my daughter walked into the kitchen, she said it smelled like summertime!

That’s why I love my old freezer in the basement; I can have freshly made strawberry jam, from local strawberries in January.

That’s the news from the homestead, see you next week!