Pickled Peppers

My neighbor's garden is bulging with banana peppers and before he left for a month long trip, he offered his garden's bounty to us. Today I dropped in to see what was ripe and was amazed at the quantity of peppers! However, besides slicing them into salads, I didn't know what else to do with them. A quick Google search tuned up a recipe for pickled peppers which are supposedly tasty on subs, pizza and sandwiches. The procedure was quite easy and there were only five ingredients.

 Slice the peppers into rings. Boil 2 cups of white vinegar with 2/3 cups of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon each of mustard seeds and celery seeds and bring to a rolling boil. Fill jars with the peppers and fill with vinegar mixture (be careful not to breathe in the potent mixture!)

Voila'! We shall see how they taste! He's got a ton more peppers in his garden. If these are truly as yummy as they sound, I may be doing more.

Tomatillo Salsa

I got some great tomatillos at the farmer's market last week and since I delight in salsa verde I wanted to try canning some. Here is the recipe I used.

Tomatillo Green Salsa (for canning) (What I actually did 3/29/09)
Yield: 8 pints

7 cups chopped tomatillos
1/2 cup chopped long green chiles
4 cups chopped onions
1 cup white vinegar
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp salt

Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and stir frequently over high heat until mixture begins to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Ladle hot salsa into pint jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Adjust lids and process in a boiling water canner 15 minutes.

Chopping the tomatillos was a little time consuming,

so I used the Cuisinart for the onions, garlic and cilantro.

Cooked everything together for 20 minutes.
Poured into clean jelly jars.
Final step: water bath. Wrapped in old Tshirst (to prevent breakage) and boiled for 15 minutes.

And that was it! We haven't tried it yet. Hope it's not too vinegar-y!

The harvest!

The jars have cooled and now I have the "problem" of finding places to store them! I jokingly call the coat closet my cellar. This is right about the time I pack away our winter clothes so I have some room in the coat closet for two boxes. I will try to squeeze the other box in my pantry. Oh the pasta sauce, chili, salsa we'll enjoy!!

Last year I had my husband and dad put in a shelf above my white board in the kitchen so I could have space to display/store my pretty jars. When the jars were gone this year I replaced it with pasta. Now they are sharing space!

Canning tomatoes

My mother and I can tomatoes every March here in Florida. We were so excited to find boxes of tomatoes at $9/box at the farmer's market. We bought 7. I wanted to make 2 into sauce and 2 into chopped tomatoes. My brother and mom will share the other 3 boxes. They wanted all sauce. We had a perfect day...not too hot and not too cold. Timothy and Annie helped out as well.

First we boiled the cleaned tomatoes to prepare them for making sauce.

While those boiled I diced tomatoes. After I filled a big bucket, we added salt and started filling jars.

After we finished those, the tomatoes were finished boiling. We drained them and the pureeing process began.

We filled more jars. Then dad wrapped each jar with a rag and placed them in the big drum while Annie filled it with water. The jars will boil for 30 minutes.

In the meantime Mom added salt to the puree. What a big pot it made!!

After all our hard work, we stopped for lunch. What did we eat? Bread and tomatoes of course! We call it pane e pomodoro.

Yummmmmmy!!!