Making cornbread and stew this morning. And some veggie broth with some veggies in the fridge that don't look super fresh anymore. I keep doing that every other week or so rather than throwing slightly tired vegetables out. I use the vegetable broth from the freezer then, every time I want to make soup and want a nice flavorful base to start.

I'm also roasting red peppers today. I bought 11lbs on sale - I know they're not local by any stretch of the imagination, but they were gorgeous. And, I use the roasted red peppers in all soups, stews, and sauces all winter long. We ran out of the case of peppers I roasted in September - which I had stored in jars of olive oil in our second fridge. Big jars - 1/2 gallon jars - all used up.

The other food that we are close to using up before the calendar year is over are my pickles. This year I used tarragon instead of dill and also put fresh, long hot red cayenne peppers in the jars. The pickles kind of blow your socks off with flavor and heat. So if Black River has small cukes I might make more of those too!