Saturday, September 29, 2012

Pickled Green Tomatoes

Just finished the Pickled Green Tomatoes from "Food in Jars".  I did two batches, they are cooling now.







I didn't have enough brine to completely fill all three jars properly and the jar that was a little low didn't seal, so that will be the first one I try in a couple of weeks.

I doubled the brine for the second batch (better to have more than not enough) and it worked great.  Two cloves of garlic, black peppercorn, bay leaves and dill seed.  Can't wait to try them.

My how time flies....

My last post was in June.  Wow.  Can't say that I've had much to post about.  Kind of got bogged down in mundane day to day life stuff and lost that crafty side for a bit.

But I'm currently working on a crocodile stitch baby blanket and will get caught up on my Craftsy and English Garden quilt blocks.  Haven't so much as laid a finger on them since then. 

My garden did okay.  Got quite a few tomatoes and I'm still getting baby tomatoes.  Just hoping the weather holds out long enough for these to get to a good size as they are from the German Giant plant I had all but given up on.  Also got some baby okra growing.  They did nothing during the heat wave and now they are growing.  Same with the jalapeno.  Go figure.

But so as not to leave this with just words, here are pictures of my flowers that I was very happy to see grow and blossom.  I'm already thinking about planting bulbs now for spring.

Red and white dahlia
Purple dahlia



One of the sunflowers

White dahlias

Pink and white dahlia


Also, I've purchased a couple of new cookbooks.  One is "Food in Jars".  I've loved the blog that inspired this book from the moment I first saw it and I love that the recipes in this book only make 3 - 5 jars instead of a dozen or more.  That means more canning for me!  The very first recipe I'll be making is the Pickled Green Tomatoes as I had a lot of green tomatoes that pretty much aren't going to ripen up with the weather getting chillier and I don't want to be hit with a bunch of ripe tomatoes at one time.  And, let's face it, I LOVE pickles.

So now back to prepping for the canning.  Shouldn't take too long as it will only be six jars.  I'm very excited about this book!