September 8th, 2008 - 14 quarts of dill pickles
Saturday, I bought about 16# of pickler cucumbers (the little ones) for $10 and made 14 quarts of dill pickles, with the addition of the 3 big cukes from the farmer. Somehow, I had the idea that 8# = 8 quarts but that’s not in the recipe (at least not as I put it in the blog) so I’m not sure where that number came from. Anyway, I wanted 14 quarts–or two batches of the canner–so I figured 15 pounds would be good. The seller had baskets of cukes for $5 each–and each was more than 8#. It was a LOT of cucumbers. But it wasn’t too difficult to process them since pickles are oh so terribly easy.
At the tail end, when I realized I would not quite fill the last jars, I remember the 3 huge cukes from the farmer, so I put them in the last 3 jars. Turns out they are squishier (since they were halved then quartered) and made the jars easier to pack than when I just had the picklers. May use a mix of sizes for all batches next time.
Eric thought the pickle from the fridge (extra cukes put in leftover brine last week) was too salty. We’ll have to see how they come out after a few weeks in the jars in the basement. I love the saltiness myself!
I also make 7 half-pints of mild salsa, using the Ball Canning Traditional Salsa recipe. I replaced all the hot peppers with green and used 1/2 the hot sauce (2 drops instead of 4) and it was just barely not too hot for me. Unfortunately, Maggie and I used up the last bits of tortilla chips to have the salsa for lunch and I forgot to buy more. (Saved a cup or so of salsa in the fridge and I want to eat it!) Will make up a hot batch for Eric to try one evening this week. It was a less complicated recipe than the one I’ve made before, and from a canning company so no worries about whether or not it’s appropriate to can. Did a lot of research online to find out that it’s acceptable to replace the hot peppers in a recipe with green peppers as long as the proportions remain the same. ::whew:: ALL the recipes I was finding had hot peppers in them, and I’m pretty much a mild salsa person. Well, not all the recipes. Ball’s mild one called for buying the company’s salsa mix from the store. I wasn’t interested in doing that.
Also tried yet another tomato sauce Sunday. Once again, way too acidic. Dumped it, along with last week’s that I’d saved, in the compost. I’m done with tomato sauces. Maybe…got another canning book from the library and it has a good sounding sauce in it.
I always say I don’t like to cook, but I’ve been thinking maybe I can’t say that anymore. I certainly do a lot of cooking to preserve the harvest!