Pickled Peppers

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;

A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;

 If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

After actually pickling some peppers, this rhyme makes no sense to me.  

How can one pick already pickled peppers??? ;o)

First time I've pickled peppers.  So easy.  I usually make Jalapeno jelly at the end of the season when I'm trying to use up the crop before the frost gets 'em.  I'll definitely do that again.  But after trying store-bought pickled jalapenos and loving them, I decided I had to pickle some of my own.

Won't be able to sample my work right away, though.  The recipe calls for the peppers to age a few weeks before using.  I may not be able to wait that long.

In case you'd like to pickle a peck of your own peppers, here's the recipe I used:

Pickled Jalapenos

2 lbs fresh jalapenos, washed and stems removed
2 cups vinegar
2 cups water
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsps salt
2 tsps pickling spices

1. Pack peppers into clean, sterilized jars, leaving a few inches at the top.
2. Bring vinegar, water, oil, salt and pickling spice to a boil in a saucepan over medium high heat.
3. Pour boiling sauce over peppers leaving at least 1/2" headspace.
4. Place caps on jars and screw down firmly.
5. Process in boiling water bath for 20 minutes.
6. Check jar seals before storing.  Any that did not seal, refrigerate promptly.
7. Age several weeks before serving. 

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What Time Is It?

Why, it's pickling time!

Ya think?!

With my cucumber plants seemingly spitting out tons . . . well, maybe not tons . . . of cucumbers, I'd say it's time to make some yummy pickles.

I'll be using Lisa's recipe for sure.  

Picture from Pickles and Cheese Blog

Everyone in my home loved pickles made with Lisa's recipe last year.

And I may try another recipe that will "put-up" the pickles for a longer shelf life.

I'll probably do some freezer pickles as well, using this recipe:

Frozen Cucumbers

1 cup onions

2 cups sugar

1 cup vinegar

1 tbsp salt

1/2 tsp celery seed

Mix together all ingredients and pour over sliced cukes.  Place in frig for 24 hours.  Stir occasionally.  Put cucumber mixture into serving-size freezer containers and freeze.  Remove from freezer approximately 20 to 30 minutes before serving.

You take these out of the freezer about 20 to 30 minutes before serving, and the pickles/cucumbers make a cool, crisp and refreshing side dish.  I can literally eat an enire container of these standing at the kitchen counter.

I'm also having quite a prolific crop of jalapenos so far.  Typically, I make jalapeno jelly, which I will most likely do again this summer, but I'm going to try making some pickled jalapenos too.  

I had some store-bought ones this past weekend for the first time mixed into scrambled eggs.  

Mmmm . . . delish!  

Why hadn't I noticed these before in the store?  I can think of all sorts of yummy ways I could use pickled jalapenos.

Now, I'm just patiently waiting for ripe tomatoes; that is, if the nasty stink bugs will stop chowing down on the few ripe ones in the garden.

Gross!!!

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ALL DAY APPLE BUTTER

When searching the net for a recipe for Apple Butter the other day, I came across the recipe below at one of my fave recipe sites, All Recipes.  What I like most about this site, besides there are tons and tons of recipes for just about anything, are the comments you can read for each recipe.  Other cooks listing their successes or failures with the recipe.  Their slight changes or additions or deletions to recipes.  

It's a great resource!

Anyway, I was quite intrigued at this recipe as it has the apple butter cooking in a slow cooker.  

Yes . . . crock pot!

Actually, I stumbled upon quite a few apple butter recipes that use the 

handy-dandy crock pot.  

The whole process was super-simple.  The hardest, or most time consuming, step, of course, was peeling, coring and chopping the apples.  Not so bad for me, though.  I actually enjoy chopping stuff.  

I find it therapeutic :o)

The apple butter turned out so thick, and rich, and creamy.  And the color!  A dark, dark chocolatey caramel ambery color.  And it tastes pretty darn good, too!

A lot of the cooks' comments on this particular recipe stated they used less sugar than the recipe called for.  I'm sure a lot of how much sugar is needed depends on the type apple you use.  I would imagine a more tart apple, like Granny Smith, might need more sugar, than, say, a Gala like I used.  It seemed like an awful lot of sugar to me as well.  So, I followed the advice of a lot of the cooks and cut the sugar almost in half. 

The recipe:

5-1/2 pounds apples - peeled, cored and finely chopped

4 cups of sugar (I used 2-1/2 cups)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon salt

(I also added 1/8 tsp of allspice and 1/8 tsp of ginger)

1. Place the apples in a slow cooker.  In a medium bowl, mix sugar and spices.  Pour mixture over the apples and mix well.
2. Cover and cook on high 1 hour.
3. Reduce heat to low and cook 9 to 11 hours (I let my apples cook a full 24 hours.), stirring occasionally until the mixture is thickened and dark brown.
4. Uncover and continue cooking on low 1 hour.  Stir with a whisk, if desired, to increase smoothness.  (I used my immersion blender to really blend the mixture super smooth.)
5. Spoon the mixture into sterile containers, cover and refrigerate or freeze.  A water bath can be done for 10 minutes to seal the jars.

If you're an apple butter lover, I'm sure you will enjoy this recipe.  Not only for it's yummy tastiness, but it's super simple preparation.  Not to mention your house will smell of simmering apples and cinnamon for a day! 

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JUST PEACHY

Peach Jam

The last bit of summer preserved in a jar.

Continuing my canning frenzy this summer, I decided to whip up some Peach Jam one morning. Seriously . . . do.not.fear jam/jelly/preserve making. It is not difficult at all! And you really don't need fancy equipment. Really, all you need is the fruit/vegetable you're preserving, canning jars and a fruit pectin, like Sure-Jell

I made this batch of Peach Jam one morning before I left for work. It literally took me 30 minutes from start to finish.

Super easy.

The easy-to-follow recipe/instruction sheet inside the box of Sure-Jell has a lot of jam and jelly recipes.

For the Peach Jam you need 3 pounds of peaches, 1 lemon and 5-1/2 cups sugar.

The instructions tell you to peel, pit and finely chop the peaches for 4 cups total. However, I read on another blogger's site that she doesn't bother with the peeling step noteing that you can not even tell there's peel in the jam. And she does a little larger than a fine chop so as to get nice big chunks in her jam. That's what I did, and it worked out great!

Isn't it purdy???

The color, and those chunks of yummy peach.

Oh, and it tastes delightful as well ;o)

I'm thinking warming some up and pouring over vanilla ice cream would be

peachy heaven . . . mmmmm . . .

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CANNING CRAZE

That's what I'm on right now . . . a canning craze!

I "put-up" another batch of Hot Pepper Relish this morning,

Aren't these lids and seals just the cutest?

And this past Sunday I jarred some homemade salsa.

I did do a water bath on the salsa. Because tomatoes are so acidic, it's highly recommended to do so.

Now, I'm not usually a big fan of cooked salsa. I much prefer freshly prepared pico de gallo. All those fresh, crisp, crunchy tomatoes, onions and peppers with a hint of refreshing lime . . . mmmmm . . . But in the winter months, when a lot of those veges are not in season, a good jarred salsa will do. This winter, I'll have MY own jarred salsa to fall back on!

X marks the spot!

Cut an x on the bottom of the tomatoes before dropping them into boiling water.

It'll be easier to pull the skin off after you've dunked them in the ice water bath to stop the cooking and cool them 'maters down!

I just love these new seals and rings that Ball's doing now. At least they're new to me. The silver tone is so cheerful, and reminiscent of the old fashioned canning jars. I like them tons better than the gold tone ones.

But I have soooo many tomatoes ripening in my garden, I had to do something. If I get another ginormous harvest of tomatoes, I'll have to either make more salsa or just jar up some tomatoes.

Oh, did you realize that plum/roma tomatoes freeze especially well? I think the romas do best because they're so meaty and have less seeds than other varieties. I just wash and dry them, remove the stems, and place them in heavy duty freezer bags. When you remove them from the freezer, as they thaw, the skins slip right off. Give them a squeeze to drain the seeds and juice and use them in stews, chilis, soups, etc.

Easy Peasy!!!

Next on the list - Pesto! My basil plants are out of control. Just have to grab some more garlic and pine nuts at the store today, and me and my food processor will be whirling away!

What a weather treat we're having here today. Not very sunny - overcast actually. But the temps are so cool. Breezy and highs in the low 70's. We were able to turn off the AC last night and throw open the windows. I have all my windows wide open today getting some fresh air into this house that's been closed up all summer do to the oppressive heat.

The lack of sunshine isn't deterring the bumble bees one bit from their pollen collection today!

Fall baseball starts tonight for Son No. 3. I may have to dig out a jacket!

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HOT PEPPER RELISH

What to do with that great harvest of jalpeno peppers? Well, one way to use them up is to make pepper jelly/relish!

If you've never attempted to make any kind of jelly or jam due to intimidation, don't be scerred. It's really very easy.

The recipe/directions for many kinds of jams and jellies are right on the instruction sheet inside the box of Sure-Jell, including the recipe for Hot Pepper Relish.

I've got all the necessary items ready to go.

10 large jalepeno peppers

3 medium red peppers

2 medium green peppers

Also needed:

1 cup cider vinegar

5 cups sugar

1/2 tsp. butter - optional

1 package Suer-Jell

I usually don't wear a rubber glove when I'm handling jalepenos to make pico or poppers or in any other recipe, but when I'm cutting this many peppers, it's usually a good idea to "glove up"!

The colors of the chopped peppers look so pretty. Like Christmas!

Empty the chopped peppers in a large saucepan adding the 1 cup of cider vinegar and the package of Sure-Jell.

Adding the optional 1/2 tsp. butter will prevent foaming when the mixture starts to boil, and it won't affect the taste one bit.

Bring the mixture to a full boil. At this time add the sugar all at once.

Stirring constantly, bring the mixture back up to a full, rolling boil for one full minute.

After one minute, remove the pot from the heat. Wearing an oven mitt, carefully ladle the hot mixture into jars to within 1/8" of the top. Wipe any drips from the rim of the jars and place on seals and rings and screw down tightly.

At this point, you could process the jars in a water bath. That's submerging the jars in a large pot of water covering them with 1 to 2 inches of water, and bringing to a boil for at least 5 minutes - 10 minutes for jam.

I actually skip this step. I read somewhere that if you turn the jars upside down while they cool, they will seal. It's worked for me every time. Just make sure once you flip the jars upright, the dimple in the center of the seal part of the lid is pushed inward and doesn't pop up when you press on it.

Pepper Relish/Jelly has that spicy sweet combo going on.

It's especially yummy as an hors de'ouvre when drizzled over cream cheese and spread on buttery crackers.

Or, for me, makes my Thomas' Bagel Thin super yummy.

- Have you tried these? They're great! And only 100 calories for the whole bagel! -

A strawberry smoothie helps cool down that little bit of spiciness.

A few more batches of this jelly/relish, and I'll have some Christmas gifts done!

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