It's a Jungle Out There

 

 

 

Summer is winding down, but with all of the late rains we have had, the garden is still very green and lush. This has been one of the most bountiful and healthy gardens I've ever had. I did lose control of the weeds as we had a couple of weeks of continual rains. As the bulk of the harvest came on, my whole family caught Covid! I was thankful to feel well enough keep up with the canning. It amounted to something like a mild flu/bad head cold for us. The kids recovered quickly, but my husband and I were sick a good two weeks.

 

I have seen so many beneficials out in the garden this year. The brown marmorated stink bugs seem to have leveled out finally. They had been the worst pest I've had for several years now, sucking juices from the fruits and spreading disease. This year my nemesis was the cabbage moths. I sprayed the cauliflower several times with BT, but they were relentless. Now with all of the rain we've had, the cauliflower is beginning to rot out. I will probably just go ahead and pull those. I used insecticidal soap a couple times to get the thrips and aphids. I have seen a lot of lady bugs too. The only place had to  spot check with Sevin spray was the summer squash and zucchinis as we battled so many squash bugs. I was careful to spray late of an evening so it would dry before the new blooms opened and the bees came back in the morning.

 

 

The luffa gourds have taken over both sides of the hoop trellis now. It is an aggressive spreader. They bloom during the day, which is nice; a sunny, yellow bloom. I canned a lot of pole beans and left the rest here to go to seed. I kept hitting my head on the dangling fruits as I was picking beans. They are heavy!

 

I've had some gorgeous sunflowers this year! These are called "Teddy Bear", I think.

The grasshoppers have arrived, looking to fill their bellies.

 

 

I have lost control of the tomato patch. It is difficult to get around. I have canned up 3 wheelbarrow loads of tomatoes and saved lots of seeds. I wish I hadn't planted them so close together. I was desperate to get several varieties in the space. I have saved seeds from multiple fruits to lessen the chance of any being all crossed out. I don't usually get many crosses, but it does happen sometimes. I did pretty well photographing and documenting all the varieties I saved. You can find those on my Instagram feed -- journey011.

The Glass Gem corn reached about 12' tall. I planted densely, in a spot that was well fertilized with chicken manure and compost. Each stalk has 3 to 4 ears each! They are filling out well and I am beside myself with anticipation for the joy of shucking them when they dry. 😄

 

 

My fingers are crossed that the Thai Red Roselle will set seed before frost. I can't wait to have a glass of this tangy, red tea as soon as these buds develop. We sure could have used that natural Vitamin C while we were sick! They are just now appearing. These were started back in February. The plants are much larger than I expected and I have them crowded, of course. I am considering digging one or two up to bring inside for the winter. 

 

September and I have a love/hate relationship. I love the crisp, cooler days, but I also get a little bit of SAD as the days get shorter. I do hate to see the garden come to an end, but I guess everything--myself included--needs the break. We have eaten so well from it this summer and I am grateful. 💚

Kitchen Floor Pickles

This is an old-fashioned, lacto-fermented pickle recipe that I got from my next door neighbor and garden buddy, Mavis. She shared a jar with me last year and they were THE best pickles I've ever tasted.

I used larger cucumbers than what it called for because that was what I had at the time. You cut them up later, after they've fermented for a month. I've made gherkins before by a similar process, but they only go about 5 days. On the second step, I am going to try using monk fruit, instead of regular sugar, since we are keto. I'm not sure I'll put the full amount in either. I am not certain how that will work out, but if it does, I will update and let you know!

ETA: 09/09/2020 -- Monkfruit worked out perfectly! I used about 1 cup, give or take. You can use as much as you want until they taste best to you. Since fermentation also utilizes some of the sugars in the cucumbers themselves, these sweet pickles are very keto-friendly. The larger cucumbers I used on this first batch still turned out good and crunchy. I was able to get a bunch of smaller ones for the second batch, which is pictured above. I decided I would also trim off the blossom ends as you do with regular pickles. There is supposedly an enzyme in them that can affect the crispiness, as I understand it.

Kitchen Floor Pickles

Using small to medium-sized cucumbers, pack tightly in a gallon jar. Add 2 tablespoons alum, 2 tablespoons salt, 1 cup whole mixed pickling spice, and 4 cups vinegar. Fill the rest of the way up with water. Cap and let set for 1 month. Be sure jar is glass or plastic. Shake jars often. (Rolling the jar across the floor each day is how this recipe got its name.) 

Remove from jar and wash thoroughly. (Wash jar too.) Cut in chunks and put back in jar. Add 4 cups sugar. Cap and shake jar. Shake until cucumbers are covered with juice. Pickles are ready to eat. Refrigerate.  

Have fun shaking! These pickles are delicious. And you don't have to can them. They won't last that long.  

Note: When I say wash, I wash with water only, not soap and water. Also, these pickles make their own juice while you're shaking them.

Rainy Day

I've been getting some pretty radishes out of the garden, as well as spring onions. The lettuce and spinach are just about to come on too. One plus to this cold, wet weather. Looks like we'll have to run the fireplace at night for the next week or two. 

We have had so much rain this spring and few sunny days so far. I am already behind on what I wanted to have done in the garden. It's a swamp out there right now.

Prep Work For Canning

Well, I've been able to confirm that some of my paste tomatoes have contracted Early Blight and I'm going to have to yank them out of there.  I'll be making a trip over to Ohio to purchase some additional canning tomatoes since I can get them for $5.00 a bushel there.  Really, I'm not sure why I take up so much garden space on tomatoes since it's easier to buy them all at once.  I do have certain varieties that I prefer, but that's just me being stubborn I guess.

Since I don't have enough paste tomatoes to can a full load right now, I've been washing, coring and quartering them as they ripen, then sticking them in the freezer until I'm ready.  This will speed things up considerably when I go to can.  All I will have to do is dump the frozen paste tomatoes into a big pot and cook them down (no need to remove the skins on paste tomatoes because you'll run it through a sieve later.)  This method also works well for your diced tomatoes too, because freezing the tomato whole will cause the skins to slip off nicely and in my opinion this is a little easier than blanching them in small batches.

I almost have enough banana peppers to make my Hot Pepper Mustard.  Oh, it's so good!  We are addicted to it and go through it quickly, using it to glaze a ham, on sandwiches or as a dipping mustard with our homemade venison summer sausage.  I like to make up a lot of half-pints to give as Christmas gifts too.

This prep-work also makes it so quick and easy to whip up a batch of mustard.  I pre-measure my four quarts of chopped peppers in to one-gallon Ziploc bags.

While I'm on the subject of hot peppers, let me give you a few words of wisdom on chopping them up, if you've never done it before.  These are things I learned the hard way!

1)  Always wear gloves.  Be very careful of what you touch with the gloves (i.e. the handles on the sink) and wash those things off thoroughly before you go back later and touch them with bare hands.  There is nothing worse than rubbing your eyes with so much as a hint of hot pepper oil on your fingers.  It hurt so badly I thought my contact lens was going to melt into my eyeball!

2)  This was a weird one I found out the hard way too.  All those hot pepper seeds and veins you toss into the sink will give off caustic vapors when you go to spray the sink down with water.  Dispose of them all before you go to rinse out the sink.  The vapors off of them will burn your eyes and lungs.  It's horrible!

Other than that, I love hot peppers.  :)

Now guess what I have planned for these glossy green beauties...

  

I am going to make homemade jalapeno poppers!  These are Mucho Nacho Jalapeno peppers.  This was the sole reason I grew them.  I also have another recipe for stuffing them and wrapping them with bacon then cooking them on the grill.  The poppers can be made up ahead of time and stored in the freezer to enjoy later.  I will be preserving most of them this way.  I'll share those recipes too as I make them and have pictures.  :)

We purchased a 20 pound propane tank this week for my canning so I wouldn't run out.  I'm still trying to find the correct adapter/hose for my Coleman camp stove, but I think I can buy extra parts to make the one I have work.  I bought the small canisters of propane for it last year and that is not very economical.

This post is linked to Barn Hop #22

Rumpelstiltskin, the Tomato

Not exactly mouthwatering...

Not counting a handful of Sweet 100 Cherry tomatoes I've gotten so far, this would be my first tomato of the season.  I have to admit, I am feeling a little bit disappointed!

Costoluto Genovese are supposed to be fluted, but this one is cat-faced on top of that and is unusually big for a Costoluto Genovese.  It weighed 0.77 lb.

That is one UGLY tomato, if I do say so myself!

Beauties

That's what Ava calls them and I think the description fits.

 For the next couple of weeks, I'll be furiously picking strawberries, trying to preserve as much of their summer sweetness as possible.

Last year, I picked and put up eleven gallons of Junebearers before my fingers fell off and I had to turn the patch over to the neighborhood kids.

This year, it's a jungle out there!  This is just one corner of my strawberry jungle.

 It goes all the way to the top of the hill (on the side of the cistern).  I really let them go, thinking that I would just dig up enough runners to start a new patch on FLAT GROUND and start all over again with a more wisely placed plot of berries.  It's hard to pick on a hillside!  And I can't till here to maintain the rows.

How's that for organic?

I can't say enough good things about these Sparkle - Junebearers.  They are unstoppable.  This patch has a lot of quackgrass in it and has had no attention at all for nearly two years.  They just have a will to live and produce strawberries.  Lots of them!  Sparkle is very disease resistant too. 

  

Ava's a big girl now, almost four.  But she still begs me to pick the berries for her while she parks and eats them.

 

"Please Mom, don't send me into the Strawberry Jungle.
I don't know if I can find my way back out again!"

I've been tossing the bad ones at the rooster to distract him.  Somewhere I read that the best way to tame a rooster is to bribe him with treats.  They say he won't consider you a challenger then.  So far so good!

Scram, chickens!  None for you!

Picking strawberries is the best part of starting off the summer.  We really enjoy them while they last.

Good times!  :)

These two gallons I decided to core, toss with a little sugar syrup and initially froze them on a cookie sheet so that I could bag them up.  We'll enjoy them on oatmeal or in smoothies later on.  I think it was my grandma who told me that a little sugar syrup would prevent them from getting freezer burn.

Speaking of beauties, check out these wonderful blue Love-in-a-Mist that volunteered in my garden this year.  I don't remember seeing them last year.  I think they came in a packet of mixed seed I planted previously.  I will be saving the seed!  I've picked off the lighter/whiter blooms to hopefully encourage them to carry on this true blue.

It's funny, my mom gave me some white Love-in-a-Mist a couple of years ago and it has aggressively popped up everywhere in my flower garden since.  I finally learned this year that I just have to pull them up before they go to seed.  The pods are really interesting too, so it took me awhile to figure this out.

 On a side note to any of my blogging buddies who are also on Blogger -- They seem to have been having some technical difficulties for over a week now.  I've tried to leave comments for many of you, but unless you have the Name/URL or Anonymous option, it won't let me.  The Google Account and OpenID options won't work for me at all.  I don't know about the others.

Low Tunnel Update

I harvested the last of my low tunnel winter radishes a couple days ago.  I really enjoyed having fresh radishes on my salads throughout the winter.

One that I pulled up was a real monster.  At first I thought maybe it was a turnip that had somehow been misplaced.



I cut it up and took at little taste.  Yep, definitely a radish.  It was still crispy, but was too hot for me, so I threw it out for the chickens.  The little ones were quite tasty though.

I haven't harvested any of the lettuce or spinach since early December.  They are safe under the tunnel and are alive, but they have gone dormant and there really isn't much to pick right now.  They are beginning to wake up with the milder temperatures we are having, so hopefully soon I can harvest some more.

When it gets warm enough to remove the cover, they will take off (from my experience last year) and I will have nice harvests of leaf lettuce very early, before any newly sown spring lettuce begins to grow.

Our spring tends to be very brief here.  Usually it goes from frozen to sweltering heat pretty quickly.  These low tunnels are working out well to give me a longer harvest period for these cool weather crops.

I am preparing to build a new raised bed that my onions and garlic will be going into this year.  I will cover it with a low tunnel early in the season and do a little experimenting there as I have read that this can help you get larger bulbs.  I will plant a row in the garden as well to use as a control.  We'll see how they do!

Mother of Vinegar

If you've ever had doubts as to what that is and whether or not your vinegar has it, wonder no more...

Yep, it really does look like snot.

And while that fact might put you off...quite a bit...have no fear.  These are good bacteria, going to work for you!

So if you get some, save it, and it will make your next batch of apple cider vinegar (ACV) go so much quicker.

If you have never made your own raw apple cider vinegar before, you should certainly give it a try because it is very, very easy to do.  For more on that, check out this informative how-to article courtesy of Ohio State University.

This past September, I used my own homegrown Red Delicious apples to make my first batch of raw ACV.  My tree puts out so many and they do not keep very long.  I did not press my cider, but instead ran my apples through a juicer and strained the juice well.  You will end up with a little sediment in the bottom, no matter how well you strain it, but it won't hurt anything. 

Fresh, organic apples are best for this.  You can also purchase fresh, unpasteurized cider in season and use that.  Just be sure it contains no preservatives.

Why go to all this trouble?  Read about the many benefits of using this old fashioned home remedy and maybe you'll want to try some too.  Whether you make your own (free) or buy it (very affordable), it is worth checking out.  But don't expect any miracles out of the clear, filtered ACV you usually find in the grocery store.  It is not at all the same stuff.  Look for raw, unfiltered, unpasteurized ACV.  Your local whole foods store will likely have it.

I have been taking half an ounce of my vinegar in a 16 oz. glass of water every morning and evening for two months now.  I can definitely tell an improvement in my energy levels and my digestion.  I lost 12 pounds quite easily in the first month (prior to the over-abundance of Christmas goodies which temporarily stalled me out).  I found that without planning it or even thinking about it, my carb cravings were drastically minimized which made it easier to stay within a set number of calories each day.  And my sinuses which are tormented by the wood stove this time of year were also much less bothersome.

Well, here I set out to simply show you a picture of what the "mother" looks like and now I have gone on to try to talk you into making your own raw ACV (as so obviously you should!  ;) )  Through many articles, I never did come across any images online to help me identify it when I first started this batch.  Toward the end of the process, you will notice it just appears one day, floating on the surface.  Eventually (and I assume that this is the result of the daily stirring) it will end up in the bottom of the jar.  I hear that you may not always get one, but if you do be sure to save it to jump-start your next batch!

I keep mine in a smaller jar with a little of the vinegar in with it and twice now the main jar of vinegar has gone on to develope a new one.  It is perfectly fine to keep them together in one jar, but I remove mine to make it easier to take out my dose of vinegar with a turkey baster.

Ground Turkey: Kids, don't try this at home!

I woke up at 6:30am today with high hopes of getting a few things done and off of my mind. 

Thursdays are my favorite day of the week.  I love Thursdays because they are the next best thing to Fridays.  And don't we all know it--Friday is here and gone swiftly and Monday is back in your face again.  So I guess it is the anticipation of Friday that makes Thursday my favorite day.  But I am getting off track...

And much like this post, today was a day that got off track!

First thing this morning, while the wee one was still in bed, I decided I would sit down and finish all of my Christmas shopping online.  Normally, I save a lot of time and aggravation by shopping online because I am not a shopper at heart and I don't enjoy the hunt and I have no desire to step out of my house on Black Friday and brave the malls or the traffic--not for any kind of deal.

I've been so busy this week processing venison and trying to put my house back together after my husband's two-week hunting vacation.  A lot of things have gone by the wayside and I missed Cyber Monday.  I figured if I was going to have time for things to be shipped, I had better get 'er done.  I didn't have much on my list, but somehow I still spent a large part of my morning doing that.

By the way, I found a really nice deal on a Cabela's work jacket to wear when I go out to do my chores in the cold.  Part of what took up most of my morning was trying to get my husband's feedback on whether he would rather have his in cotton duck or canvas (like a Carhartt jacket).

Lunch and a few chores later, I decided it was time to get on with dinner.

I bought a 22-pound turkey on sale at Krogers the week before Thanksgiving.  It was a pretty good deal at 49 cents a pound and since it was limit one, I bought the biggest turkey I could find.

This turkey was supposed to be for Thanksgiving dinner with my husband's family.  My mother-in-law was supposed to work on Thanksgiving, so we were going to get together the day before on Wednesday.  I thought I would try to help out by cooking the turkey, but her schedule got changed around last minute and she did get Thursday off.

Well, the only problem was I had to be at my sister's for Thanksgiving at 2pm and wouldn't be able to stay home and babysit a big turkey.  They require much basting and close observation and I vividly remember one of my Mom's turkeys catching on fire when we were kids.  All of us kids had to run out of the house into the cold until they could get the thing under control, so I wasn't about to leave the turkey home by himself to cook.

So why didn't I take my turkey down to my mother-in-law's and let her roast him, you ask?  I did think of that, but her primary oven wasn't working.  All she could accommodate was a little turkey breast using the mini-oven over in the apartment where my husband and I used to live as newlyweds.

Giant 22-pound turkey was already unthawed so he had to be dealt with.  My husband wanted to know why wouldn't I just put him back in the freezer, but every good housewife knows that you'll ruin your meat by double freezing it!

I don't know about you, but for a family of three (one of which happens to be a picky three-year-old), 21 pounds of leftover turkey is a lot of turkey.  So this is where the catastrophe comes in.  Rather than cook the whole bird and suffer the leftovers, I got the bright idea to bone out the legs, thighs and wings to make my own ground turkey from it.

This is a cautionary tale about the horrors of beastly turkeys.  Believe me when I tell you it was the most disgusting thing I've ever touched.  I naively assumed that all poultry was created equal.  I was not prepared for the greasy, slimy mess that I unleashed when I cut into this turkey.

A few weeks ago we butchered another batch of chickens.  A couple of days ago I butchered two deer and even fleshed a doe hide for tanning.  I did not expect this store-bought turkey to make me feel so icky and squeamish.

He was so heavy and slippery that I could hardly keep ahold of him, but I did finally get the appendages removed and put the breast part into the oven to begin cooking.  I stopped short of removing the backbone because I didn't want to mess with it anymore so my turkey sat up on the roasting tray looking much like a big, melted blob and nothing like the store-bought turkey breasts I've prepared in the past.  (And before you get to poking fun at me, I'll have you know I have cooked a turkey before--and several!)

I set to work taking the remaining dark meat off of the bones.  This quickly got to be exhausting.  I could hardly keep ahold of the slippery legs and wings because of all the weird fat on the bird.  It took forever and I had to try to remove most of the muscle casings and tendon fibers because I knew they would clog up the grinder (a Kitchen Aid with grinder attachment).

After an hour or so I started to worry that the meat was getting too warm.  For fear that I would give my loved ones food poisoning, I opened my kitchen window to the 35-degree December day.  This made my hands cold, which made them even more clumsy along with the turkey grease, so I poked and cut myself a couple of times with the knife.  Not enough to really bleed--just enough to make me angry, so I lit into the turkey with a vengence, determined to get it done. 

With bits of greasy turkey slung all over my shirt, my counters and the wall above my sink, I paused to wonder what kind of gruesome and indiscriminate mechanical process it must take to render the ground turkey that you buy at the store.  I know they wouldn't take the time to cut out the fat and gristle like I do (because I must).  I've eaten a lot of turkey burgers over the past several years and enjoyed them.  Although they are widely regarded as a health food, I am not so sure about that now.  Sorry Jennie-O, I will never look at turkey burgers the same again.

I gave up on the neck meat, the mid-wing and tips.  I decided those would not be wasted if I cooked them up and gave them to the chickens.  I did make stock from them.  By now, my 49-cents per pound mega-turkey was becoming much more expensive by the minute as my precious time and labor increased its value.

I had been so involved in my greasy turkey massacre that I took little note of my daughter playing behind me so quietly.  She asked me for an "orangin" and when I turned around to tell her my hands were too greasy to peel one for her at the moment I couldn't believe the destruction she had wrought and quietly too.



This is just what she did to the kitchen...

I don't know what she did to the dog water to make it green, but they drank it anyway.

Grinding the meat was the easy part.  I ended up with 5 pounds of ground turkey that I mixed with finely crushed Pepperidge Farm herb-seasoned stuffing, salt, pepper and dried onion to make twenty turkey burger patties.  I've lost my appetite for turkey for the time being, but I'm sure that a couple of months from now when I'm over it, they'll taste really good.

Lesson learned; I will never cut up a turkey again as long as I live.

I got nothing else on my list accomplished today.  By the time we had dinner, I was just too tired to go on.

Stick a fork in me--I'm done!!

Jelly from Wild Grapes

I couldn't get my hands on any Concord grapes this year.  But it was a good year for the wild grapes and I came across a nice cluster of vines attached to a fallen tree which made them very easy to reach!  I've always wanted to try making jelly from wild grapes and this was the year to do it.  I ended up with a peck basket full.

They are small, but mighty!  Wild grapes look a lot like your regular Concord grapes, but they are much smaller.  Their seeds are still large and there is very little flesh to the fruit.  All their flavor is contained in the skins.  They have a deep, wine-like flavor.

Here is a cluster beside a few store-bought seedless red grapes for size comparison.

Once I got them all plucked, I was surprised how many grapes I actually had.  They filled my 8 quart stockpot about 1/3 of the way full.

I prepared the juice as outlined in the Ball Blue Book, adding just enough distilled water to cover them by about half an inch.  This was brought to a boil and simmered gently for an hour or so, until the fruit was well-cooked and soft.

I allowed that to cool enough to handle, then poured it into about 8 layers of cheesecloth.  I like to tie the bag from the handle of a cabinet and let it drip overnight.

Now this is something the Ball Blue Book will not tell you and I learned from my mother-in-law.  You must allow the juice to passively drip from the bag.  Do not squeeze it!  If you do, you will cause your juice to become cloudy.  You can put the pulp back into the pot with a little more water and repeat the process to get some more juice out of it if you want.

Isn't that a pretty color?

Now, yet another thing the Ball Blue Book will not tell you:  for the clearest possible juice, you should let the pitcher of juice sit undisturbed in the refrigerator for 24 hours or so.  This allows the tartaric acid crystals to settle out and they will form on the bottom and sides of your pitcher.  Do not stir or disturb at all.  When you gently pour out the juice, they will stay behind in the pitcher.  Tartaric acid is very sour.  This is the same compound from which cream of tartar is derived.

I made my jelly following the Ball Blue Book recipe.  The first batch I did was with pectin.  It made a gorgeous, burgundy colored jelly.

I had enough juice left over to do a half batch of grape jelly without pectin (also in the BBB.)  It came out very nicely too.  I think next time though, I will dilute the juice by one-fourth.  The no-pectin recipe had a stronger, purer, wild grape flavor as a result of being boiled down.

The flavor of this jelly is so much more complex than that of regular grape jelly.  I like that it has a little extra punch of tartness.  It has a deeper flavor and I've thought hard about how to describe it.  I would say it has a lambrusco grape/tart red cherry flavor.

I ended up with 5 pints and was very pleased with the results for my effort!

Hot Pepper Mustard

Ok, I've been canning for 2 weeks straight!  I put up lots of goodies for winter and I've lost count now how many batches of this sweet/hot pepper butter I've made.  I've given away a few jars to friends and family and have had several requests for the recipe, so here it is...

You won't find this recipe in the Ball Blue Book.  My guess is that they don't approve of it because it contains flour as a thickener.  I've made hundreds of jars of this and have yet to have had any go bad.  My dad loves this stuff and if you could can it in gallon jars, he'd be all for it!

It is the perfect dipping mustard.  We like it with cheese and summer sausage, on ham or turkey sandwiches, for dipping pretzels and it also makes a great glaze for a baked ham or venison roast.

I originally got this recipe from a lady at my dad's church.  My dad then ran over to Ohio and bought a bushel of U-Pick hungarian hot wax banana peppers and begged me to make him a lifetime supply of mustard.  The original version was a little too flaming hot and salty for our tastes, so I've tweaked it a bit and clarified the directions a little.  Here's my version...

(UPDATE:  08-02-11 -- I have later come to learn that using  flour as a thickener is considered a big no-no according to official canning standards (as per BBB and University Ag. Extension agents.)  I will tell you that I have made many batches of this mustard and have never had any trouble with it.  Also the older lady from my dad's church who gave me the recipe has been making it for years. 

Clear-Jel (Cook-Type only, instant will not do) is considered the only acceptable thickening agent for canning.  The concern is that the flour may inhibit the jar from heating thoroughly all the way through.  I do not recommend making this in quart jars, for this reason.  If you do choose to make this recipe, I just want you to be aware of this issue and be sure that you process your jars properly and for the recommended length of time.  You may want to try it with the Clear-Jel (Cook-Type) to be on the safe side.)

**********

(UPDATE:  10-16-14 -- I just canned up two batches today using the Clear-Jel (Cook-Type) instead of flour.  It takes less Clear-Jel than flour to thicken.  1/2 to 3/4 of a cup is plenty.  The consistency is just as nice as flour and actually tastes a little better I think.  

I bought a new rack for my BWB canner and since it doesn't have dividers, I can fit 13 half-pints into one batch.  That still leaves about 6 half-pints more in the pan, so either leave it on a low setting to wait or you could divide the measurements of the batch in half.  I ended up with 36 half-pints of pepper butter.  Guess that will be what everyone is getting for Christmas this year.)

Hot Pepper Mustard (Butter)

(yields about 7 pints)

• 4 quarts chopped hot and/or sweet banana peppers (3.3 lbs or about 36 large peppers)
• 1 qt. vinegar
• 1 qt. prepared yellow mustard (don't go cheap, get a good quality mustard)
• 4 c. sugar
• Clear-Jel (Cook-Type) -or- 1&1/4 c. flour 
• 2 tbsp. salt (optional; I use 1 tbsp.)

1. Wearing vinyl gloves, cut up and deseed/devein the peppers.  Remove stem and blossom ends and cut into large chunks.  You can toss in some of the seeds if you want it really hot.  I go about 50/50 on the ratio of hot and sweet banana peppers.  This gives it a kick without burning your tongue off!

     I also like to take a few dark red peppers aside and chop them by hand before adding to the pot.  They look really nice suspended in the golden yellow of the mixture.

2. Puree the peppers in a blender using some of the vinegar.

3. In a large pot, combine all ingredients except the flour.

4. In a small bowl, add enough water to the flour to make a smooth paste.  Be sure to work all the lumps out.

5. Add flour paste to the mixture.

6. Simmer over medium heat until thickened, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

IMPORTANT -- Try not to let the mustard boil as this will incorporate air bubbles into the mixture.  Air bubbles are the number one cause of the mustard boiling out of the jars in while in the water bath.  If you think it looks bubbly, let it sit awhile on the lowest heat setting until they are gone.  Stir gently.

7. Pour into hot jars leaving 1/2" headspace.  Wipe rims and place lids.  Hot water bath 15 minutes for pints and half-pints.

Enjoy!

I made a bunch of half-pints to give as Christmas gifts.  I try to can something special every year just for that purpose.

Well, now I am on to green beans.  I picked 5 gallons this week.  I am loving my Nickell heirloom pole beans I got from Sustainable Mountain Agriculture, Inc.  They are so tender and flavorful.  I am saving seeds for trading and may do a giveaway later on.

The garden is close to finishing up.  I have a few fall crops to put in yet.  I am getting ready to till the main garden up and plant it to buckwheat for my bees (who are doing great, btw.)  August is really my busiest time of year!