Archive for the ‘bread & butter’ Tag
I know it’s a little early in the year but with the garden filling up with cucumbers it was time to get busy. Last night I gathered all of the equipment together in preparation for canning. I cleaned jars, gathered lids and rings, pots and pans, and updated my experimental pickle recipe. We normally make hot Bread & Butter pickles and a lot of them. I’ve made dill pickles in the past but never was really happy with the results. My approach to things has always been to identify a problem and then fix it and this new recipe for Hot Mustard Dill Pickles is the fix.
I took my normal kosher dill recipe and jacked it up with a number of additional ingredients and spices. The end result will be pickles that are extremely hot, canned in a liquid containing dry mustard, curry, habanero powder, and a handful of other minor ingredients. I soaked the cukes in canning Lime overnight which should help keep them crispy once their canned.
Yesterday afternoon we picked the cucumbers, zucchini’s, and jalapeño’s from the garden along with some herbs. I’d be making my mustard pickles and my better-half would be making her new experimental recipe for hot pickled zucchini or as she calls it Hot Zucchini Pickles. She’s trying to come up with a few solutions for processing and storing of the large number of zucchini’s we’re expecting. She’s always made a lot of zucchini breads but we can only eat so much of that.
We work well as a team and set up an assembly line in the kitchen. I sliced the cukes, the habaneros, and a few jalapeños and set them aside. She prepared her zucchini, and jalapeños, and we were ready to rock and roll. She was responsible for packing the jars and I then added the brine, capped the jars and placed them into the water bath. It took a couple of hours of work but we rolled along like a well oiled machine.
After all was said and done we had ten pint jars of the mustard pickles and six additional pints of pickled zucchini. The jars sealed properly and will be ready for labeling tomorrow. Unfortunately we have to wait a month or so before we can taste the finished product. The veggies need time to absorb the flavor from the brine and the heat from the hot peppers. We can’t wait to try them and will keep our fingers crossed for the anticipated good results.
“The Finished Product”
It’s raining like hell this morning so I decided to spend this time in bed enjoying the sounds and smells of the day. I like walking in the rain almost as much as I enjoy listening to it but not today. Today is going to be a computer day for me because I have a number of things that need to be accomplished.
In my last posting I made an attempt to create some discussion with my list of ten questions. While a good number of people visited and read the posting the response to my request for their answers apparently fell on deaf ears. Not one single response was disappointing as hell but not totally unexpected. At least I tried to wake up a few brain cells out there and just so you know, I will try again.
Today is the day I begin learning how to use the new software package I recently purchased. Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 & Adobe Premiere Elements 12 has been purchased and installed and await my full attention for the next six hours or so. I’m also awaiting the arrival from Amazon of a 400 page User’s Manual I was forced to buy because those cheap bastards at Adobe don’t feel that including a Users Manual is cost effective. Both of the programs are massive and without a manual you might never ever know all of the bells and whistles they contains. I’m praying that the manual arrives today or tomorrow so I can spend the next few days experimenting with the software. I need to get up to speed as quickly as possible because I have projects that will be much easier to complete once I’ve gotten a little hands-on experience.
This week another of my goals is to begin preparations for my first canning class of 2014. A number of my better-half’s friends are interested in learning how the process works so they can eventually can their own pickles. With so many requests I decided to do a class that would take care of them all at once. I’m just a week or so away from canning my first batch of pickles this year so I’ve invited a group of them to get together, watch me do a batch, take appropriate notes, and return home to attempt to do some of their own. I’ve tried to convince them that canning is a simple process but they appear very skeptical. I also make myself available 24/7 for emergency telephone calls when the occasional mishap arises. I’ve done a few one-on-ones in the past which were very successful so this should be a breeze.
I’ve been cleaning and preparing jars for a few weeks because it’s going to get very busy very quickly and I need to keep ahead of things. I’m estimating we’ll be canning 40-60 pints of hot Bread & Butter pickles, 20 pints of hot Mustard Dills, and 15-20 pints of hot Kosher Dills. Add in another 30-50 half pints of assorted jellies, jams, and relishes and you can see that we’ll be canning our asses off for six weeks or so. If I do say so myself, we make some damn good pickles, a truly excellent variety of jams, and the relishes can speak for themselves. Many of the folks who request our pickles return the jars for a refill and as you can see I have them everywhere.
Fun, fun, and more fun.
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