Tag: salsa

Adventures In Canning
Canning and Preserving · Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Adventures In Canning

LSieh2 Comments

Every time I have tried to can things recently, I have been thwarted by life! It’s been very frustrating. I’m hoping to get some more of the jams canned this Friday. We have a house work weekend planned, so then I won’t mind too much if the kitchen gets a little sticky. We can just clean it right up!

Some of the fruits I have waiting to be jam are strawberries, rhubarb, and apricots. I might pick up some more pomegranate juice too and try some jellies. I meant to make Jasmine Tea Jelly for my FIL for Father’s Day, but it never quite got made. Maybe I can get it done for Christmas.

I have made one jam so far and it was the Plum Cardamom jam that I fell in love with last year. This year I tripled the batch and didn’t bother straining it, just blended it with a stick blender. I think it worked just fine. The original recipe is from the Small Jars, Big Flavors book, but I only sort of followed it. I ended up using the old school method for one cup sugar to one cup fruit. It was still so good, that I was licking the ladle. 🙂 I ended up with 13 half pints of jam. I might not be as possessive this year. Last year I only had 8 jars and I had 4 of them myself. 🙂 Here is the jam, pictured with my next two canning experiments.

I ran out of cucumbers for my pickles, so may make some more. Some of them went bad before I could get to them. These are Hot Garlic Pickles from the Taste of Home Canning magazine. I made them last year and they were a hit. I want to make some plain garlic pickles too and some more squash pickles. (Don’t tell anyone, but my Dad ate zucchini voluntarily!! Oops…. 😉 ) I have to have enough pickles for future pickle trays, after all. I ended up with two jars of pickles.

The third other jar is pickled red onions! I love them on sandwiches, so thought I should have some. I haven’t tried them yet, but I think they look super pretty!

My friend K and I got together and made the Husbands play video games and snuggle the dog while we canned tomatoes over Labor Day. We ended up with probably 40 lbs of tomatoes? We made Zesty Salsa from the Ball Blue Book, and Roasted Garlic Pasta/Pizza sauce and Spicy Sicilian Pasta/Pizza sauce, I believe from the Better Homes canning magazine.

K took home half of them and some of the tomatoes. The salsa had some garden peppers and tomatoes. She brought a whole bag of mixed hot peppers, including habeneros and cherry bomb peppers, so it might be super spicy again. I’m excited to try it!

She canned the rest of her tomatoes, and I tried out our new dehydrator to make sundried tomatoes for the freezer. I cover them in olive oil and they keep for about 6 months in the freezer? To be honest, I have kept them for longer than that and they do fine. I didn’t quite get the consistency right, as I didn’t quite know how to make the temperature increase in the machine. Now I know and I want to try to dry some herbs next.

Don’t they look so pretty? I added some basil, oregano, and garlic too them before they were dried. The house smelled amazing!

My garden hasn’t been as successful as I wish it was. It looks pretty sad right now. I have to try digging the radishes and carrots. They were both small when I tried before. I was sad. Next year, we’ll have to try some different things.

My strawberries are still producing though and if the squirrels haven’t stolen my poblano peppers yet, I should have two out there. We also have some more purple peppers started. I think I might need to read some more garden planning books or something to figure out how to be more productive with it. Next year, I would also like to add the third bed, which might be partially herbs, and actually cage the tomatoes. They were unwieldy again this year and it was very annoying.

Back to canning talk… I have a new canning magazine (Better Homes and Gardens- Can It! Freeze It!) which has some very interesting looking recipes in it, such as Vanilla-Caramel Butter, Vanilla Citrus Plums, Brandied Strawberry jam, Roasted Tomatillo-Corn Salsa, and Sage Peach Jam.

I’m not sure exactly how many more things I will get done. I want to try some wine jelly and a whiskey ginger jelly too, but those I can really do any time.

I’m going to take Fancy’s example and go to bed to dream of new and interesting canning options though. I’ll leave you with a picture of my prized possession: a large jar of Penzey’s Sandwich Sprinkle! The Husband just shook his head, but I know he’s excited about it too. 😉

Musings
Canning and Preserving · Crafty · Gardening

Musings

LSiehLeave a comment

I’ve been doing some thinking on how the blog has changed in the past few months and especially at the amount of change since I started this project. I started it as a way to keep myself accountable for using my recipes and craft books and so far it’s definitely done that. 

I think though, I may have outgrown that strict model. I am still more likely to pull out a cookbook or to find a Pinterest recipe when I want to try something new, but I am finding it very limiting for some types of recipes, such as baking.  

The blog has definitely helped inspire me to sew more too! I am much more adventurous and willing to try new things, as well as finding a ton of new inspiration. I even wrote a short piece with a picture for a huge site, Sewcialists. A year ago, I was still not putting pictures of myself on the blog at all! Now there’s a picture of me with messy hair, wearing bellydance pants!

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on going anywhere, but you may start to see different content. Maybe some original recipes, maybe some tutorials or sewing tips. Possibly even some dog treat recipes! 

I’m also experimenting with the new editor, which is still in the Beta stage. Supposedly, it shows me all my pictures how they appear when loaded, but that’s not true… I was only recently logging into the blog on my desk top and saw that the pictures taken with my phone held a certain way loaded sideways. For the record, they look the right side up when viewed on my phone or IPad. Technology and I do not get along. So be patient please, I will fix them as soon as I can. In the meantime, maybe just use it as a way to stretch your neck? 🙂

I have gotten so far off my posting schedule with all the crazy going on here, that I figured tonight would be a great time to just admit it and start over. Fancy, our adventurous pup, got sprayed by a skunk last week, and we’ve spent most of the weekend attempting to make her smell less disgusting. She’s super stressed, as she doesn’t understand why she isn’t allowed in the bedroom, or why we don’t want her cuddling with us. Poor thing. Hopefully the shampoo and other things will help and she can be a snuggly dog again soon. 

Other things are going well though. The garden is booming! We have peppers galore. I think I may have to can some more salsa this Friday and use these tiny, but super hot peppers in it. We may not be able to eat it, but it will be delicious!

We also have Jalapenos and cayenne peppers growing. 

I will also use these in salsa. 🙂 We even have red bell peppers popping in. I think once I cut back the zucchini enough, they were finally able to grow and get the nutrients they needed. 

I am very excited. I thought the red peppers were going to be a wash this year. I had such lovely plans for roasted red peppers in the freezer. 

The herbs are growing well, except the bee balm. I killed that one by accident. The lemon thyme is growing back slowly. Everything else is good, but I forgot pictures. 

The tomatoes are, of course, growing like crazy! I honestly didn’t expect them to grow this well, but here we are. The Husband had to buy 6 foot stakes for me, as the plants kept falling down! The tomatoes got too heavy. I froze some green tomato salsa using the ones that fell down while being staked. 

It was meant to be canned, but I didn’t have enough head space to safely can it. I haven’t tasted it yet either.  We have two other jars of salsa opened that I should eat first. It smelled good though and I canned it before work!

Mr. Stripey has yellow tomatoes! They were all in weird places to get pictures of though. I’m so excited! I hope they are lovely. My Indigo rose tomatoes are getting huge! They are supposed to be cherry tomato sized, but they seem to enjoy being in the soil much better than pots. They are in the back. The front ones are a bush cherry tomato.

I’ve also made some delicious plum cardamom jam, which I may have to make a second batch of. I might be selfish and keep it all for me. I guess the Husband can have some too… Maybe… If he’s nice to me. It was from Southern Living: Little Jars, Big Flavors. Here it is on a chocolate chip poppy seed muffin. 

I could eat this directly from the jar with a spoon. Maybe I’ll get some more plums for Friday too. 

I have also been crafting for our Harry Potter party. I want to make it fit in with my fall decor so I can use it again. I’m a fan of multi season and purpose decorations. 

These were jars and vases from the basement that I used mirror spray paint on to make faux Mercury Glass. You know, the old glass that’s kind of streaky and wonderful? 

How cool are these? Here’s what some of them look like with LED candles in them. 

They are so pretty! I’m going to try some with colored glass items as well. For our party, we need lots of different glass vases, bottles, and vessels. These items will work through out the year too. It’s been fun to find new  uses for things. 

I’ll have to catch you all up on my sewing too, but that will come at another time. I should probably get to bed so I can finish more projects before work tomorrow. Have a great night!

Big Summer Blowout- Party Post!
Party Posts

Big Summer Blowout- Party Post!

LSiehLeave a comment

This is Fancy wondering why she isn’t getting pets and what that weird thing is on my lap. She’s quite intense. She doesn’t understand the importance of blogging about the party!

I had a terrible migraine yesterday and ended up doing some hand quilting while watching Star Trek. My coordination was so off and I kept dropping things, so the Husband kindly and firmly suggested I sit down and not touch anything breakable. He’s so smart. 🙂

We had a fun weekend. I made too much food as usual, but we are working our way through it. The featured post is the view of the whole table minus the crab dip, as it was in the oven. We might need tiered serving trays or a bigger table…

It was the Husband’s birthday as well, so he had a chocolate dragon cake to celebrate. I don’t own a regular bundt cake pan, only a dragon one. 🙂

It was from Tastes Better From Scratch. 

https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/chocolate-bundt-cake/

The cake turned out to be nice and tender and had mini chocolate chips in it as well. I poured a bittersweet ganache and edible gold over the top. It made kind of a vaguely dragon shaped lump.

It tasted delicious though!

I also made Pineapple Sage Vanilla Bean Cupcakes with the homemade jam from Southern Living Little Jars Big Flavor.

They were delicious! I used almost the same recipe for frosting as I did the fruit pizza. I added lemon flavoring to the cupcake frosting though.

Here’s the fruit pizza. I thought it would be so summery and fun. It was both!

I used the recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/05/23/fruit-pizza/

We had chocolate chip cookies too, of course. The Husband was so happy. 🙂

One of the most fun parts of the party was seeing how many recipes had things from the garden in them. This zucchini bread had some of the zukes in it.

The Caprese salad had garden basil.

I used heirloom tomatoes and mozzarella cheese from the store. My in-laws had given us some fancy oils and vinegar for Christmas, so I used the pomegranate balsamic. It was very good.

Garden tomatoes were featured in the pasta salad, which I don’t have  an individual picture of, and in the Firebreather salsa. There were some Jalefuego peppers in there as well.

You can see the peach salsa too. It was a little sweet for me, but not as spicy. Those recipes I covered in the last canning post. Also in the canning post were the pickle recipes. 🙂 To refresh your memory, I made zucchini pickles, dilly beans, garlic hot pickles, and ginger pickles.

I tried all of them, except the garlic ones by accident, and liked them. Now I just have to remember to eat them! Part of the long pickles were actually made from cucs from a friend’s garden. The hot pickles have tiny spicy chilis from my garden in them. I think even my Mom might agree that this might be enough pickles! 🙂

It was a delicious and fun summer party! I’m already planning for our next big party, which will be a Harry Potter Tasting Party. 🙂 We actually had quite a few good meals last week too, so I will post more about those later. I remembered to take pictures!

Now, I need to go figure put dinner for tomorrow. We need a little break from leftovers. Send us good dinner vibes!

Canning Galore!
Canning and Preserving

Canning Galore!

LSiehLeave a comment

Hello! Besides canning this weekend, we also did some yard work. A lot of yard work. It was slightly unexpected yard work, but it made the yard look a lot better.

Notice anything missing? Here, I’ll show you another one…

We took the trellis down! Hooray!

We can see the garden from the house! We can watch the dog when she runs away at night and tries to find the skunk.

We are going to have to rent some equipment to get the two bushes out and are repurposing the trellis by retraining roses to grow on it instead of through the fence.

It was killing the apple tree and whatever else it could reach and really didn’t fit what we wanted our backyard to be.

We can also see the compost, which I forgot to say we started. I think it’s going well. I certainly added a lot to it this weekend. My full-blown canning run took up pretty much two whole days. I had to restrain myself on Sunday from canning more. I still have a list going of other recipes, but not enough time to make them all!

The only one not pictured is the ginger dill pickles from Epicurious. https://www-epicurious-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ginger-dill-pickles-56389773/amp

I had one today and they need a little more time to cure, but will be good to serve for the summer party.

Here are the other pickles:

Hot Garlic Pickles and regular Garlic Pickles. They are from Better Homes and Gardens Canning from 2015.

I used the little tiny, but super hot peppers from the garden! They need to sit for a week, so I haven’t tried them yet. They should be both garlicky and spicy.

Squash Pickles! This is a recipe I’ve been wanting to try since last year, but I never had the ingredients at the same time. I halved the recipe. The Husband doesn’t eat pickles… I know, I don’t get it either…

These were made from the zucchini from the garden. The recipe came from Southern Living Little Jars, Big Flavors. 

These beans were not from the garden. 🙂 They are also from the same cookbook. I want to make almost everything in it.

This Spicy BBQ sauce was from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. I made this recipe before, but with less spicy peppers. This year’s peppers were super spicy. I made this two weeks ago, I think. I used tomatoes from the freezer.

Also from the Blue Book is this Spicy Tomato Salsa. We are officially calling this Firebreather Salsa. I used all garden Jale-fuego peppers and a couple of tomatoes.

We have peach salsa too. No garden items in this one, but it smelled good. I’m excited to try this.

The peaches were wonderful. I will have to go back and get some more. More recipes to come!

I will be joining this puppers shortly.

I have to keep my strength up for party prep and more canning! Have a great night.