Heirloom Tomato Pickles

Summer brings a bounty of garden-fresh produce, and one of the best ways to enjoy and preserve it is by pickling some of it.

With fresh garlic and herbs, these heirloom tomato pickles are a tasty way to preserve and enjoy the bumper crop of tomatoes and fresh herbs from your garden!

Choose firm, ripe tomatoes for this recipe, and combine them with whichever herbs are ready to harvest, such as basil, oregano, dill, thyme or chives!

More Pickle Recipes

• Dilly Snap Peas
• Watermelon Rind Pickles
• Simple Pickled Beets
• Simple Homemade Sauerkraut
• Small Footprint Dill Pickles

Heirloom Tomato Pickles

With fresh garlic and herbs, these pickles are a tasty way to preserve and enjoy a bounty of heirloom tomatoes.

• 2 cups heirloom tomatoes (vertically quartered (try mixing different kinds, including green or cherry tomatoes in your batch!))
• 2 to 4 cloves garlic (sliced)
• 1/2 cup fresh herbs (chopped (I like to use lemon basil and oregano))
• 1 Tbsp.

Continue reading Heirloom Tomato Pickles at Small Footprint Family.

Coconut Flour Zucchini Bread (Paleo, Gluten Free, Dairy Free)

At the end of the summer, it seems there is no end to the amount of zucchini to use up. Here’s a delicious, gluten-free, GAPS and Paleo-friendly way to enjoy the zucchini bounty. And this coconut flour zucchini bread recipe also freezes well so you can enjoy it during the winter too!

Preserving Zucchini

Zucchini is easy to save by drying it, pickling it, or freezing it. You can make delightful zucchini chips in your dehydrator that make great snacks. Just slice nice and thin with a mandolin, season and dehydrate till crisp!

You can also freeze thickly-sliced zucchini and use it in sautées and stir-fries later in the year. One thing I like to do with a bumper crop of zucchini is to grate it, squeeze out the excess moisture and then freeze it by the cup for use later during the winter. The shredded zucchini goes great in soups, stews, muffins and breads like this one.

Make Ahead Zucchini Muffins

This coconut flour zucchini bread recipe makes great muffins too, but you’ll have to shorten the baking time a bit. Just keep an eye on them and take them out when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Continue reading Coconut Flour Zucchini Bread (Paleo, Gluten Free, Dairy Free) at Small Footprint Family.

10 Tips for a Healthy, Planet-Friendly Back-to-School

It’s the end of the summer and time for the kids to head back to school. So how do you combine school’s three R’s of reading, writing and ‘rithmetic with the planet’s three R’s of reduce, reuse, and recycle?

Here are 10 tips for getting off to a healthy, planet-friendly school year.

1. Get new school clothes second hand.

Kids outgrow clothing very quickly, so buying new clothes from retail stores not only wastes a lot of money for very little value, but “fast fashion” also contributes greatly to both sweatshop labor and environmental degradation from the GMO crops, oil-based synthetic fabrics and toxic dyes used to make them. In fact, the clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world—second only to oil!

A great way to get new school clothes for free is to organize a clothing swap with family, friends or neighbors. Some communities have “Swap, Don’t Shop” events every fall, but if there isn’t one where you live, consider organizing one yourself!

If a swap won’t work, purchasing clothing from flea markets, consignment shops and thrift stores not only embodies the eco-friendly principle of “reuse”, it’ll also save you a lot of money.

Continue reading 10 Tips for a Healthy, Planet-Friendly Back-to-School at Small Footprint Family.