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This week is really the calm before our storm. The last weekend of September is our biggest show of the year–a two-day local festival. It’s a huge festival that requires a lot of preplanning and baking ahead of time. This is really the ONE week (and only weekend) we don’t have pressing plans until October. And we plan to take FULL advantage of it!
The garden is gearing up for canning season. The cucumbers have finished for the year & the beans are drying. One kind will be saved for seed & the other will be shelled and used for bean soup beans. Tomatoes are just starting to turn, our corn tassels are drying and then they’ll be ready to harvest.
Sadly we’ve lost several more stalks to Corn Smut. Our Tumeric & Ginger arrived in the mail & we got them planted in pots yesterday. We got a small harvest of apples that we made into fried apples and served them over ice cream.
There were several more banana peppers that we harvested as well.
A few of them we chopped up and put on our pizza a few weeks ago & this past weekend we made pickled banana peppers! Dad found a YouTube Video explaining the simple process using ingredients that most people already have in their kitchen or are easy to find in the store. We followed the recipe replacing the garlic cloves for minced garlic & the celery seed for celery flakes.
We chopped our peppers & boiled our brine. After heating our jars (we don’t sterilize them; we just wash them & heat them in the oven on the lowest setting until we’re ready to pack them–this was how Great Grandma taught us), we put the peppers inside and covered them with the brine. Put a reusable storage lid on top loosely & let them cool on the counter overnight.
The next morning we placed them in the fridge. We chose to make refrigerator peppers this time around to try them. If we like them & we’re able to do another batch we’ll hot water bath them for longer-term storage.
While we were at it we had a couple more zucchini that needed to be preserved. All the zucchini that we’ve gotten so far we’ve eaten roasted. But these two we peeled, quartered, & grated using our food processer to freeze. Over the Winter we’ll use it to make Great Grandma’s zucchini bread, add some to soup, or even pasta sauce. We ended up with three 2-cup bags for the freezer & about 1.5 cups that we added to our pasta sauce for dinner that night.
Now, comes the fun part: trying the pickled peppers!
Sunday night’s dinner was brats, coleslaw, & pickled peppers. They were good but a little too vinegary. So we tried them again Monday night…& they were perfect! After thinking about it, I think I pulled them out too early Sunday & they just needed more time to mingle!
Even though we’ve been busy thus far & anticipate being busier over the next several weeks we are thankful that we have the ability to do what we are doing. That many hands do indeed make light work & for the most part, we’re all willing to pitch in to get the job done–whatever that job may be.
Until next time,
Bailey Sue
