Fall is here. The time to pick the end of the season garden produce is upon us. You may be wondering what to do with all the cabbage and carrots you have.

There are two easy ways to take care of excess cabbage if you don’t have a root cellar. The first is to make sauerkraut. The second, the one you will learn about today, is to turn it into coleslaw.

As for the excess carrots, you will use some in coleslaw, but feel free to can or dehydrate the others for winter use, that is if you do not have a root cellar.

Homemade coleslaw tastes so much better to me than anything I can buy. Not only do I have the joy of growing my own vegetables to use in it, but I know they were organically grown. If your garden was a flop, ask a neighbor or you can even go to the store and buy a head of cabbage and a bag of carrots.

I prefer to use store bought dressing. I have a favorite brand, Marzetti. I have not found a homemade recipe that duplicates the creamy taste of this brand. Plus it makes it extra easy to make, one less step to complete.

To begin, gather your ingredients, a fresh head of cabbage, a bunch of carrots and your dressing. As you can see I used a bag of peeled baby carrots this time around. This was a one pound bag. I chose to use it all, but you can use however much you like.

The next step is to remove the outer leaves of the cabbage.

Cut the cabbage into quarters, making sure to remove the heart. This is best done by cutting at an angle. The heart is the hard piece of cabbage at the bottom near the spot where it was attached to the plant. The heart goes a little way up into the cabbage itself. This part is edible but many people simply do not enjoy eating it as it is hard.

The next step is to use a knife to cut the cabbage up into small pieces. If you take each quarter and slice it longways two to three times then cut the cabbage shortways across you will get small pieces. You can use a food processer but I like using a knife much better because the cabbage does not end up as small or bruised.

This is what your cabbage will look like when it is all cut up. Simply put it into a bowl. You may need two bowls, one for mixing and one for holding the extra cabbage.

The next step is to dice or shred the carrots. I use a food processor for this because I like small diced carrots.

This gives you an idea what the carrots look like when they come out of the food processor. I simply dump them on top of the cabbage and continue to dice more until I have diced up all of the carrots I wish to put into the coleslaw. Then I mix the cabbage and carrots up.

Once the cabbage and carrots are throughly mixed, I add the dressing. Simply pour it on top, then stir it in. For this recipe I used 1 head of cabbage, 1 poud of carrots and 1 jar of dressing.

Refrigerate until it is cold, then serve. Nothing could be easier! Your family will love the taste of homemade coleslaw!