J is for Jars #AtoZChallenge

These jars were Christmas presents for a few friends. I found the idea to decorate them online and was happy with the way they turned out.

Decorating and wrapping gifts are not my strong suits. I’m good at cooking, baking, and in this case, canning, but that final step before gifting usually gets overlooked.

This time I was happy to decorate. It was fun. I learned that the name of that kind of scraggly looking string is jute. (I would have guessed raffia.)

This delicious chutney is a treat to make.

The recipe for the  Hot Mango-Rum Chutney came from Better Homes and Gardens. It’s not actually hot, but the people I gave it to would consider it spicy so I labeled it to give them warning. The recipe can be made with papaya or mango.

The recipes for the Green Tomato Relish and Dilled Green Tomatoes don’t seem to be online, but if you have an older version of the Ball Blue Book, you’ll see them there. I did blog about making them in a post about relish a while back.

 

Chocolate Habanero

Why do they call you chocolate habanero? Is it because they want to watch me take a bite and laugh at my tears and burning tongue? I know it’s only a name because they look like chocolate, but I’m just dumb enough to want to taste one….

I love the hot peppers on display at the farmer’s market.

They are too spicy for me, but I enjoy pickling them for my husband.

They are so pretty when chopped up and canned.

Daily Prompt: Relish (Green Tomato & Beet)

In addition to my fried green tomatoes, I also made green tomato relish. I had never tasted it before and am surprised at how much I like it. The green tomatoes make it tangy and the brown sugar balances that with some sweetness. There’s also onion, pepper, cabbage and mustard seeds.

Chopped green tomatoes, onion, cabbage, peppers are salted for several hours, rinsed, and then turned into relish. This is about 28 cups!

I also made some beet relish a few weeks ago. (Same day I made a batch of hot peppers, apparently.)

It’s pretty heavy on the beet flavor, but still good. I had never tasted this either, but I had some beets and the recipe in the canning book seemed good.

I think the green tomato is my new favorite. I had to try some refrigerator pickled slices, too. These are flavored with dill.

I made 7 pints of the green tomato relish, 4 pints of the slices, 4 half-pints of beet relish, and one pint of refrigerator pickled slices. Looks like I’ll be…savoring this relish for a long time.

viaDaily Prompt: Relish

P is for Preserving Food

Two summers ago I tried canning for the first time and loved it. Last year I did even more food-preservation projects.

Cherries were first. I canned some sweet and some sour, and I also made jam for the first time. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I’m still getting over how much sugar goes into jam. It’s hard to dump 6-7 cups of sugar into a pot of something I’m making.

Later, I made blackberry jam. It was such a nice day picking these blackberries that I used some photos for my entry in the photo challenge called Good Day.

I also canned peaches. At the time, I felt like I had packed the jars full of peach halves, but after canning they kind of shrunk and floated, making it look like I could have fit more in.

Throughout the summer, I was canning tomato sauce. Each week I would bring home tomatoes from the farmers market and make sauce.

Sometimes you can find tomato “seconds,” which are fruits that aren’t in perfect shape, but are still definitely edible. There may be bruises that you have to cut off, splits, or minor things like that. These are sold at a discount, or sometimes given away for free. They still make excellent sauce, so they’re good enough for me.

In all, I think the things that I canned were: cherries, cherry jam, tomato sauce, pickled beets, spicy peppers, applesauce, picked roasted bell peppers, peaches, blackberry jam.

It got so hectic that I wasn’t keeping up with writing down or taking pictures of the stuff I canned, it was hard enough just to get it done and still have my tiny kitchen cleaned and ready to cook the next meal. But I really loved it. The chaos and mess were totally worth it.

I love the idea of preserving good products at the peak of freshness to enjoy later. It’s nice to have control over the process of what goes in it. I’m looking forward to doing more this summer as things come into season.

***

I’m participating in the A to Z Challenge for the month of April. The idea is to post every day, except Sundays, and end up with one post for each letter of the alphabet. It’s a good challenge to help me to blog every day.

Things That Are Hot: Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge

For this week’s Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge, the theme is things that are hot. This campfire made some yummy smores last summer.

This is a mix of spicy peppers that I pickled and canned last fall. Jalapeños, Scotch Bonnets, and some others that a friend grew but couldn’t remember the name. They sure were hot when I was cutting them up!

Another campfire for smores from last summer. I guess that’s all I do in the warm months.

Marshmallows again. I really didn’t think I ate them that often.

(You could totally toast a marshmallow here if you had to.)

Photo Challenge: Good Day–Blackberries

Yesterday was a pretty good day. Picked blackberries in the morning and made jam in the afternoon. I don’t like blackberry jam, but I know several people who love it, so this will make nice gifts for them.

Sun ripening action

You can’t hide from me, berry!

These seem a little picked over.

Seven half pints, plus a little extra

This is in response to this week’s theme: Today was a good day. The challenge asked us to create a Mesh gallery using their new app. I thought about trying it, but I just feel to busy right now to download and try something new. I’ve been neglecting my blog as it is. I don’t want to download and neglect something else. If they could integrate it into the WordPress interface I might use it.

Cherry Abundance

Inside a sour cherry tree

Say what you want about the weather this spring, (it’s been bat-shit crazy!), it produced some excellent cherries. This was only my second year picking my own, and everyone at the orchard said what a terrific crop it was. Last year there were no sour cherries and a limited amount of sweet ones. This year the trees were simply dripping with them.

A row of sour cherries

What did I do with them? I tried making jam for the first time. It came out OK, but I still prefer the brand that I’m used to buying. My jam isn’t sour enough, so I guess next time I would add more lemon juice. I don’t think I’ll do that anytime soon because I’m still getting over the massive amount of sugar that I had to add. I mean, I understand that this is how jam is made, but 6 cups?? It’s a lot to dump in all at once.

Several different types of sweet cherries.

I made some sour cherry juice that I mixed with some sparkling water to make a little refreshing drink. I froze a few batches of cherry pie mix and hope to test one soon.

Sweet cherries waiting to be picked

For the most part I canned the cherries in an extra light syrup so I have options for using them later.

The cherries back in April

This is what the cherry tree rows looked like in April, with the plain white flowers just starting to bloom. Not the prettiest cherry blossoms, but it’s not like these trees had any delicious fruit on them. Or these.

Cherry season is short and sweet. It was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to picking my favorite fruit again next year.

This should keep the cherry party going for a while

Canning Roasted Pickled Peppers: 5 Photos, 5 Stories: Day 5

Roasted pickled peppers

My last post in this challenge is about my fourth canning project from last fall.  I made three pints of roasted pickled bell peppers and they were fabulous.

Like the tomato sauce, this second-ever canning project of mine also took a lot of work: first the roasting until the peppers got slightly browned, then putting in a paper bag to cool (this is allegedly supposed to make them easier to peel the skin), then peeling the skin (which didn’t seem to be easy despite sitting in the paper bag), then the packing and boiling.

I used peppers from the farmer’s market, which came in varying shapes, colors, and sizes because they were organically grown. I understand that naturally grown foods do not grow into the standardized, uniform shapes that we see at the grocery store–and I love that….but when it comes to peeling roasted peppers, all that variation was kind of a pain.

While I was swearing my way through the peeling process, I said I wouldn’t make these again. How could they be worth all the trouble? Well, a few months later, after the flavors had mingled and set, I discovered that they are totally worth it. I began adding them to everything and I look forward to more later this summer.

Canning was a fun experience and I’m looking forward to doing more this year. I think I unknowingly chose harder things first and easier foods later: tomato sauce, pickled peppers, apple butter and pickled beets. Now at least I know what I’m in for when I bring home a 45-lbs box of tomatoes or decide to start roasting 7 lbs of bell peppers. It was a fun learning experience.

This post comes as part of the Five Photos, Five Stories challenge sent to me by Nonny Moose. I thought my theme for the next five days would be food, since I haven’t written much about that lately. A theme is not necessary, but for me this is motivation to get caught up on some posts I have been drafting in my mind.

The challenge rules are:

1. Post a photo each day for five consecutive days.
2. Attach a story to the photo. It can be real, fiction, a poem, a quote or short paragraph – that is entirely up to you.
3. At the end of each day, nominate one other blogger to take part.

Today I nominate Luke of LukeWymer. It’s a new blog and I hope Luke shows us some more beautiful Irish scenery. There’s no pressure, it’s just for fun 🙂

Canning Tomato Sauce: 5 Photos, 5 Stories: Day 4

Turns out 45 lbs of tomatoes is a hell of a lot!

The tomatoes have taken over

Cooking it all down

7 of 9 … quarts of tomato sauce

Nine quarts of tomato sauce was my first canning project. I should have started out with something easier, but I didn’t realize that at the time. Using a recipe in the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, I started by procuring 45 lbs of tomatoes from my farmer friend in early September. As I washed, quartered, and threw them in the pot, I realized that I would need several pots to do the job of cooking them down. I should have started out by throwing them in the pressure cooker/canner, because that’s where they all ended up. The next sad realization was that it was going to take forever to put it all through the food mill. It did take forever. I’m still doing it, in fact, with no end in sight.

I ended up with just about 9 quarts of tomato sauce. Since my pressure canner only holds 7, I just refrigerated the last two jars.

The sauce was delicious! I had read that you can use either citric acid or lemon juice to raise the acidity to safe levels, and I tried a couple jars of each. I didn’t notice much of a difference.

This project took most of the day and it was around midnight when I finally pulled the jars out of the canner and set them on the counter. I could hear the little popping sounds as I fell asleep. It was a lot of work but rewarding and completely worth it. I’m looking forward to doing it again at the end of the summer!

This post comes as part of the Five Photos, Five Stories challenge sent to me by Nonny Moose. I thought my theme for the next five days would be food, since I haven’t written much about that lately. A theme is not necessary, but for me this is motivation to get caught up on some posts I have been drafting in my mind.

The challenge rules are:

1. Post a photo each day for five consecutive days.
2. Attach a story to the photo. It can be real, fiction, a poem, a quote or short paragraph – that is entirely up to you.
3. At the end of each day, nominate one other blogger to take part.

Today I nominate Guenny of Together and Apart No More. Guenny, are you up for another photo challenge? There’s no pressure, it’s just for fun 🙂

Canned Pickled Beets: 5 Photos, 5 Stories: Day 2

In October, I canned some pickled beets. This was my fourth canning project after tomato sauce, roasted pickled peppers, and apple butter. The pickling liquid included allspice, clove and cinnamon, which gives the beets such a delicious and warm spicy flavor. I hadn’t tried canning before this past fall, so it was nice to finally achieve my goal. I’m planning to do more canning this year!

This post comes as part of the Five Photos, Five Stories challenge sent to me by Nonny Moose. I thought my theme for the next five days would be food, since I haven’t written much about that lately. A theme is not necessary, but for me this is motivation to get caught up on some posts I have been drafting in my mind.

The challenge rules are:

1. Post a photo each day for five consecutive days.
2. Attach a story to the photo. It can be real, fiction, a poem, a quote or short paragraph – that is entirely up to you.
3. At the end of each day, nominate one other blogger to take part.

Today I nominate lrod of lrod’s blog. lrod, are you up for the challenge? There’s no pressure, it’s just for fun 🙂