Homestead Cooking with Carol

Homestead Cooking with Carol: Bountiful Make-ahead Meals shows you, the busy homesteading homemaker, how to prepare your food at harvest time so you spend less time making supper the rest of the year. It shows you how to prepare simple, healthy foods that do not require a culinary degree for those nights when you lack the energy to chop, braise, caramelize, or glaze.

Homestead Cooking with Carol: Bountiful Make-ahead Meals shows you, the busy homesteading homemaker, how to prepare your food at harvest time so you spend less time making supper the rest of the year. It shows you how to prepare simple, healthy foods that do not require a culinary degree for those nights when you lack the energy to chop, braise, caramelize, or glaze. Nothing relieves stress in a woman’s life like knowing what’s for supper. Having meals put up, having a system to live by, and casting off the expectations that every meal needs to be a gourmet affair will bring you renewed energy of mind and spirit. In fact, quick stress-free home cooking makes the entire family happy. In addition, how would you like to: • have cookies warm from the oven every day when your kids step off the bus, • take a new mom a meal without adding to your already heavy work load, • say “No” to the local drive-thru after an exhausting shopping day because you know supper can be ready before the kids unload the car, • save enough money to buy something special, • or welcome unexpected company with a smile because simply adding one more jar to the pot makes supper with friends a possibility? When you implement the techniques in Homestead Cooking with Carol you can do all this and more. As an added bonus, the book includes free menu-planning worksheets to print and use to simplify your journey to Bountiful Make-ahead Meals.

Carol J. Alexander’s mother was the queen of Spam and all things boxed. After moving out of her parents’ home, Carol taught herself how to cook wholesome food on a shoestring. Marrying, having six children, and moving past the pavement, perfected her style of cooking by the motto, “Eat your food as close to the way God made it as possible.” When not in her garden or homestead kitchen, Carol works as a freelance journalist specializing in all things home. Since 2007, her writing has motivated and inspired both new homesteaders and homesteading wannabes in their journeys to living a sustainable lifestyle. Homeschooling, parenting, natural living, herbal medicine, and frugal living are topics that round out her portfolio. Carol’s work has appeared in BackHome, Grit, Hobby Farms, Urban Farm, From Scratch, Home Education, The Old Schoolhouse, and in regional parenting magazines all over North America. As a columnist for her local newspaper, several highly trafficked blogs, and a national magazine, Carol understands the meaning of a deadline. Discipline, attention to detail, research, and interviewing skills have made it possible for her writing to reach millions of readers with the message, “If I can do it, and have enough energy left over to tell you about it, then you can do it too.” Carol’s can-do attitude is most evident in her series of Lessons from the Homestead. Written to show parents how to teach their children academic skills alongside their farm chores, each booklet features over 50 lessons in math, science, language, and more. A homeschooling parent herself since 1993, Carol understands that getting all the farm chores done, plus all the schoolwork too, can seem monumental at times. So monumental that folks may feel tempted to pull up their stakes in the country and move back to the pavement. When that crisis point comes, every time it comes, Carol is there to help. Carol lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband, four of their six children, and the usual homestead critters. When not writing, you can find her in the garden wishing for things to grow, or in the kitchen putting up her bounty.