Nice cans

Ron and I have been busy beavers the past couple days. I work at home now, which pretty much means I work until I can't work no mo'. But on Thursday, Ron had the day off, so I decided to try and ignore my emails (within reason) and immerse myself in our decided culinary adventures for the day ... pickling and canning.

Ron's parents are great gardeners, and they gave us a couple ginormous bags of tomatoes, jalapenos, cucumbers and green beans last weekend. And since we are but two people and we hardly ever get the chance to eat meals together, it only made sense for us to preserve some of the produce we'd never get to eating.

I was a little nervous about canning, but thought I could handle Alton Brown's Bread and Butter pickles and Kinda Sorta Sours because they're refrigerator pickles. I was also itchin' to try Emily's recipe for Ultimate Tomato Sauce, which only requires freezing. And on a more adventurous note, we decided to add Dilly Beans to our stash (The recipe can be found in The Cottage Cookbook, written by my dear friend, Emily Betz Tyra), which require a little more attention. Ron handled the jar boiling because he is my hero and is willing to risk losing his eyesight for a good jar of beans ... for real.


Packin' the jars


Roasting the maters

The results thus far? The sauce is, indeed, the ULTIMATE. We ate quite a bit of it before it actually got to the can and I think about it at random moments throughout the day. We're saving it for a special occasion and I'm now wishing we had many many more tomatoes for many many more jars. Make it. Seriously. Then invite me over to eat it.

We broke open a jar of the Kinda Sorta Sours last night (which we added strips of jalapeno to ... we likah dah spicy around here), and oooh mama, were they awesome. Garlicky, sorta sour and just the right amount of spice. The bread and butters are still pickling and the Dilly beans will need a bit of time before we can devour them. I check them each time I pass through the kitchen.


Pickles!

You know, canning, like roasting a chicken or sewing my own clothes, has always been one of those things I didn't know how to do but wanted to know how to do ... it's nice to check one of those things off every once in a while. Makes you feel like a real live person who does stuff, you know?


The legion