Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Canning season has begun!

I started canning things that were otherwise going to go to waste this weekend. I did 4 pints of pickled beets, which were slightly disappointing. I used the Chioggia beets, which have great alternating bands of red and white, like a bulls eye, unfortunately 30 minutes in the canner cooked pretty much all of the color out of them. I also canned 6 quarts of spiced red cabbage relish. It smelled great when I was cooking the pickling liquid, lots of different spices in there including mustard seed, mace, coriander, allspice, and cloves.

I also started an experiment in homemade sauerkraut, about 12 pounds of cabbage went into it and it is trying to ferment down in the root cellar. This week I am also going to start a crock of pickles, there are starting to be enough of them to pick some every day. This year I will actually follow the recipe I have for pickles, since trying to "wing it" last year left us with jars full of tasteless flabby trash. I found a recipe for bread and butter zucchini pickles that I am considering trying, we have an awful lot of zucchini still!

The tomatoes are really starting to come in now, so far the Black Krims are my favorite. I still haven't made an "all-farm" BLT with the last of last year's bacon, but that might just change tonight. And no, I am not baking the bread myself, but I might make homemade mayonnaise.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

mmmmmm....homemade mayonaise