Time to use all those habaneros! Okay, let me warn you, this is a hazardous exercise. I was coughing, my eyes watering, and my nose burning all while using rubber gloves. The combination of the habanero and vinegar fumes is a killer. Thankfully, I have successfully made a few bottles of hot sauce.
This recipe has carrots in it, so the sauce is a little chunkier than I’m used to. We will have to see if I can get it out of the hot sauce bottles without too much trouble.
We did it! We used the rest of our tomatoes to make 8 jars of salsa. 4 hot, 4 mild. We’ve had a tiny taste but won’t know for sure until we pick up some chips.
This weekend we thawed out all of the processed tomatoes that we froze over the summer. It ended up being around 20-something jars. Our first project was to make tomato sauce with 7 lbs. of tomatoes. We even had some basil we had frozen from the garden to use as seasoning.
Some of the jars
Cooking down the tomatoes
Final sauce jars
We didn’t use a recipe specifically for canning, so we poured the sauce into old pasta jars and froze them for later. The remaining 10 lbs. of tomatoes will be made into salsa! Good activity for a cold Sunday.
We’ve been collecting and freezing raspberries all summer long. Last night, we finally had five cups of raspberries and were able to try our hand at making jam. Drew mashed all the berries and mixed them with sugar.
We then took turns stirring for the next half hour.
Willis was not much help at this time.
Once it started to gel, we put it in our jars and processed them in the water bath. Drew and I snuck a taste off the stirring spoon and it was quite delicious!
Another 40 jalapenos came out of the garden this week. This time Drew took on the task of pickling the peppers. I learned that you can’t can jalapenos without a pressure cooker, but you are able to can pickled jalapenos just with a water bath. We got to try an earlier batch out on hamburgers a couple weekends ago when I gave my dad a jar. Not too shabby. It brought out my dad’s hiccups, so I know they are good.
I was up to 5 lbs. i
n cucumbers, meaning it was time to make a bunch more pickles. I even got Drew in on the action to help me out.
My coworker brought me a bag full of squash that they had grown. So while waiting on the pickles to soak, I made zucchini bread and sliced, blanched, and froze the rest of the squash to use later. I’m ready for nap and I haven’t even processed the pickles yet.
Zucchini bread
Boiling squash
Just a few days after making sweet pickles, I had about 10 cucumbers ready for harvest. Looks like dill pickles it is.
I added three sprigs of dill, 2 garlic cloves, and 1/4 tsp. of red pepper flakes to each jar. I sliced the cucumbers in rounds so that they would be perfect for hamburgers. I made up a brine of 3 cups water, 2 cups vinegar, and 1/4 cup pickling salt. After the jars were filled with cucumbers I added in the brine leaving 1/2 inch of head space.
Finished them off by processing the jars for 10 minutes.
Just have to wait 4-6 weeks to try them out!
With so many cucumbers growing like crazy, I decided to try my hand at making sweet pickles. I based my process on the Mrs. Wages recipe.
First, I soaked them in lime water most of the day and then ice water for 3 hours.
Lime Water
Then I made up the syrup, soaked the cucumbers in that overnight, and boiled them in the morning.
I packed it all into jars and processed the jars for 10 minutes. I had cut down the recipe since I was only working with three jars, but I ended up running out of the syrup. I had to throw together some more. Next time I’ll have to adjust.
Luckily, all of the jars sealed. I won’t know if it is a complete success until they’ve had time to soak up all the flavor.
