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Welcome to Meaghan Grows!

I share gardening how-tos, recipes, and tutorials while working towards my own permaculture homestead. My hope is this site can teach you something new and help you to make positive changes toward sustainability and control over your consumption. Maybe it can even inspire you to reconnect with the rhythms of nature and get your hands in the soil.

Meaghan Grows started in 2020 to help millennials learn traditional skills that give them power over their food supply and consumption. Because if anyone should be interested in homesteading, food sovereignty and reclaiming agency in the midst of our broken capitalist system, it’s a broke-ass millennial.

Find gardening tips, homesteading how-tos, healthy, nourishing recipes, and more!

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

About Meaghan

I’m Meaghan, the titular person behind Meaghan Grows – gardener, beginning homesteader, recipe developer, writer and photographer.

I was born in Illinois and, minus stints in the UK and Canada, I’m a lifelong Midwesterner. I currently call Ohio home. I’m in zone 6a, gardening in a tiny city backyard. Real tiny: about 5,000 sq. ft. We have two raised beds and a whole mess of containers. if I can grow food, you can too.

When I’m not busy blogging, I’m working on my PhD or hanging out with my dog and partner. I’m so glad you stopped by Meaghan Grows, and I hope you’ll come back and hang out!

About Meaghan Grows

Here, we grow food. we grow knowledge. and we grow ourselves.

This is modern millennial homesteading – We’re serious about sustainability, food sovereignty, ethical consumption and stewarding our relationship to the earth and its creatures. Not much else, though.

What we believe

Evolution hasn’t caught up to the way we live now. People are sick, stressed and unhappy.

I can’t fix that. I’m not here to claim a garden can cure your chronic illness or your need to work three jobs to make ends meet.

This isn’t a return-to-your-roots, self-sufficiency-minded, off-grid homesteading kind of site. I don’t believe you should have to do it all on your own. I believe humans are meant to thrive in community, not out of it.

But we thrive in community with people, animals and plants. So too does community go all the way down to pollinators like carpenter bees and monarchs and funghi like the mycorrhizae that improve soil health.

I believe we have a deep need to stick our hands in the dirt – to find our way back to the garden, nourishing our bodies and our souls.

Side view of Meaghan Grows' two garden beds, teeming with plants in the height of summer.

For something that quite literally nourishes us, why do so few of us relegate space and attention to growing and preparing food? Why are vegetable gardens not the heart of our home landscapes? If we push what nourishes us metaphorically and literally out of sight, what other aspects of are lives are we doing this for too? Likewise, what are we pushing away that we need for our wellbeing? What else deserves to be brought from the margins to the center of our lives? 

I’m here to help you find your way back to the garden – for nourishment, for wellbeing, for connection to the rhythms of nature and for joy.

What you’ll find here

  • Beginner gardening tips, successes and failures
  • Recipes that heal – your body and sometimes just your soul
  • Homesteading how-tos for every stage from pipe dream to rolling acreage, without the heavy dose of religion or right-wing individualism

So if you’re interested in anything from a recipe for sourdough pizza to a how to set up a composting system to beginner gardening tips, stay a while. You’re my people. You don’t need a farm or a graduate degree to get started.

Here, we’re growing a deeper connection to our foodshed, a respect for how we nourish our bodies and the land and, always, an over-the-top love for plants.

Come grow with me!

meaghangrows

Baking the sun into a pie to coax the light back o Baking the sun into a pie to coax the light back on this day of deepest dark. 

Of all the things the garden gives me, one of the gifts I most appreciate is its invitation to live in alignment with the seasons, at least in the growing months of the year.

That alignment is a bit harder come by in the cold months, and so I try to cultivate rituals to fill that gap. Often, they come in the shape of kitchen work.

In recent years, I’ve taken up making wassail and pairing with a savory pork and apple pie. We’ll eat cozy, warming food and burn what we’re looking to release from our lives in the beeswax candles I made at the height of summer.

If Christmas is all about turning outward, celebrating with loved ones, parties and feasting, the Winter Solstice - Yule - invites us to turn inward, to release ourselves into the earth’s rhythms, to rest. 

To embrace the darkness, even as we await the return of the light.

#solstice #wintersolstice #yule #christmas #pie #sourdough #sourdoughpiecrust #fermentedfoods #traditionalfood #plantgrowmake #celebrateseasonalshifts #kitchenwitch #savorypie #holidayseason #holidaybaking #cozy #hygge #theartofslowliving #winterbaking #cozyseason #livethelittlethings #traditionalskills #sourdoughbaking #realfoodmovement
Instagram post 17988089188662810 Instagram post 17988089188662810
Homemade marshmallows are way easier than you thin Homemade marshmallows are way easier than you think and the perfect way to welcome in the holiday baking season. I’ll enjoy these peppermint ones in bedtime hot cocoa and give some as gifts.

·       3 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
·       1 cup cold water (divided)
·       1 ¼ cup (408g) honey and maple syrup (you choose the ratio – I like more syrup but honey will give you a whiter marshmallow)
·       2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
·       ¾ teaspoon peppermint extract
·       Pinch of salt
·       Red food dye (optional)
·       A butter knife, toothpick, or wooden skewer (optional)
·       Powdered sugar, arrowroot starch, or tapioca flour
 
1.     Grease a pan well with avocado oil spray or coconut oil. I used an 11x7 but a smaller pan will yield thicker marshmallows. Also grease a spatula.
2.     In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine gelatin with ½ c cold water. Use the whisk attachment to gently combine, then allow to bloom while making the syrup mixture.
3.     In a deep, thick-bottomed saucepan, combine honey, maple syrup, and remaining ½ c cold water. Bring to medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, and cook until syrup reaches 235-240°F. A clip-on candy thermometer makes this easier.
4.     When syrup is ready, turn mixer onto medium and slowly pour syrup in along the side of the bowl.
5.     Turn the mixer up to medium-high and allow to whip for ~8 min. You’ll see the mixture change color and texture until it looks like marshmallow fluff. Add salt, peppermint extract, and vanilla, and whip for another minute.
6.     Working quickly, pour mixture into your prepared pan and smooth with spatula. If you want to add the red swirl, drip dye across the surface of the marshmallows and quickly swirl in with your butter knife or skewer.
7.     Allow to set for at least six hours. Loosen the edges of the marshmallow from the pan, then tip onto a cutting board dusted with powdered sugar, arrowroot or tapioca flour. Cut into whatever size you wish then dust with more powdered sugar to prevent sticking. Store in an airtight container.

#baking #holidaybaking #marshmallows #peppermintmarshmallows #fromscratch #norefinedsugar #marshmallowrecipe
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I’m Meaghan – I help millennials learn traditional skills that give them power over their food supply and consumption. Grow with me!

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meaghangrows

Baking the sun into a pie to coax the light back o Baking the sun into a pie to coax the light back on this day of deepest dark. 

Of all the things the garden gives me, one of the gifts I most appreciate is its invitation to live in alignment with the seasons, at least in the growing months of the year.

That alignment is a bit harder come by in the cold months, and so I try to cultivate rituals to fill that gap. Often, they come in the shape of kitchen work.

In recent years, I’ve taken up making wassail and pairing with a savory pork and apple pie. We’ll eat cozy, warming food and burn what we’re looking to release from our lives in the beeswax candles I made at the height of summer.

If Christmas is all about turning outward, celebrating with loved ones, parties and feasting, the Winter Solstice - Yule - invites us to turn inward, to release ourselves into the earth’s rhythms, to rest. 

To embrace the darkness, even as we await the return of the light.

#solstice #wintersolstice #yule #christmas #pie #sourdough #sourdoughpiecrust #fermentedfoods #traditionalfood #plantgrowmake #celebrateseasonalshifts #kitchenwitch #savorypie #holidayseason #holidaybaking #cozy #hygge #theartofslowliving #winterbaking #cozyseason #livethelittlethings #traditionalskills #sourdoughbaking #realfoodmovement
Instagram post 17988089188662810 Instagram post 17988089188662810
Homemade marshmallows are way easier than you thin Homemade marshmallows are way easier than you think and the perfect way to welcome in the holiday baking season. I’ll enjoy these peppermint ones in bedtime hot cocoa and give some as gifts.

·       3 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
·       1 cup cold water (divided)
·       1 ¼ cup (408g) honey and maple syrup (you choose the ratio – I like more syrup but honey will give you a whiter marshmallow)
·       2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
·       ¾ teaspoon peppermint extract
·       Pinch of salt
·       Red food dye (optional)
·       A butter knife, toothpick, or wooden skewer (optional)
·       Powdered sugar, arrowroot starch, or tapioca flour
 
1.     Grease a pan well with avocado oil spray or coconut oil. I used an 11x7 but a smaller pan will yield thicker marshmallows. Also grease a spatula.
2.     In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine gelatin with ½ c cold water. Use the whisk attachment to gently combine, then allow to bloom while making the syrup mixture.
3.     In a deep, thick-bottomed saucepan, combine honey, maple syrup, and remaining ½ c cold water. Bring to medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, and cook until syrup reaches 235-240°F. A clip-on candy thermometer makes this easier.
4.     When syrup is ready, turn mixer onto medium and slowly pour syrup in along the side of the bowl.
5.     Turn the mixer up to medium-high and allow to whip for ~8 min. You’ll see the mixture change color and texture until it looks like marshmallow fluff. Add salt, peppermint extract, and vanilla, and whip for another minute.
6.     Working quickly, pour mixture into your prepared pan and smooth with spatula. If you want to add the red swirl, drip dye across the surface of the marshmallows and quickly swirl in with your butter knife or skewer.
7.     Allow to set for at least six hours. Loosen the edges of the marshmallow from the pan, then tip onto a cutting board dusted with powdered sugar, arrowroot or tapioca flour. Cut into whatever size you wish then dust with more powdered sugar to prevent sticking. Store in an airtight container.

#baking #holidaybaking #marshmallows #peppermintmarshmallows #fromscratch #norefinedsugar #marshmallowrecipe
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