Homemade, not storebought

[KBCraig]

I grew up gardening and canning. The growing season in Arkansas is considerably longer, so we ate fresh stuff from April/May until July/August, then fall crops in September/October. Then we ate what we had canned. We bought milk, meat, flour & sugar, and snacks, and that was the extent of our grocery bill.

We canned a few varieties of pickles (dill, spicy dill, sweet, bread & butter, sour), canned our own sauerkraut, and put up a bunch of green beans. We froze a lot of corn, and stored potatoes and onions on screens in the barn (cool, dark & dry). Grew grapes and made our own wine. Had tomatoes every conceivable way, until we were sick of them.

I've told myself every year for the past few years that this was going to be the year I started gardening again. I've got the room. Got the know-how. Got the rear-tine tiller. But the truth is, I really hate dirt. 

Maybe this year.

[Lloyd Danforth]

When I was a kid the whole family would spend one day picking blueberries up in Granville, MA.  Little, teeny, highbush blueberries.  We would bring them home and pick out the green ones and sticks and freeze them in bags just the right size for pancakes, muffins or pies.
My parents made pickles, piccalilli relish, and jelly from wild grapes and beach plums.
For a while I made a lot of bread and granola.  Milled wheat for flour. I made some things just to see if I could.  I made some tofu once using every large pan I owned and the better part of an evening.  The pound I made tasted great.  I made some Cottage Cheese once.  That was pretty easy.  We tapped a friends maples one year and, probably, used too much natural gas to make a couple of quarts of really good syrup.