Make a condiment from scratch at #23 is one I’ve accomplished quite a few times in the past several years. A recipe in Food in Jars by Marisa McClellan for spicy honey mustard inspired me at first and when I made it in 2016, it turned out great. (Bonus: this relates to #44, follow a recipe to the T without making any changes, and #40, can/preserve something on the list for a triple win!)
I haven’t canned anything since 2016, but her recipes are wonderful; I still love her blog and follow her page on Instagram. I may have a really good reason to start canning again very soon, though: our garden is absolutely exploding and if all goes well, we’ll have a ton of tomatoes, squash, and other produce in just a few weeks. (Check off another one, #47, grow something.)
More recently, I’ve been making quite a bit of BBQ sauce on the stove to serve with grilled chicken or to make a vegetarian pulled “pork” sandwiches with seitan. I make the sauce on the stove, let it reduce a little bit, and adjust the seasonings to get a nice balance of salty, sweet, heat (typically from just black pepper but I’m a sucker for anything involving chipotles in adobo, which I use a lot), and vinegar. Typically, there is little left any time I make it; it comes out so good and is a much better alternative to most store-bought varieties—which tend to have a lot of salt, sugar, or both added to them. I’ll write my recipe down soon to share. 🙂
At #38, create a well-stocked pantry, seems like a dull but actually fun activity to do on a rainy summer day—or at least I think it is. During the quarantine, Dave and I emptied and took inventory of our entire pantry. And I have certainly loved pantry raid recipes over the years, which are both practical and fun to make. It’s a “make you feel good” feeling of accomplishment, I think.
And speaking of accomplishment, I am very proud of is #42, make homemade pasta, which I was finally able to cross off this year! But I’ll stop there and save more on that for my next post… 😉
