pickling away

mom-pickles in progress**

When mom was visiting, we made a ridiculous amount of pickles. I think the final count was 25 quarts. Those are the enormous jars. Now if I could just fast-forward a few months so that I could actually eat them!

bright green, before being processed in the hot pot

pickle-colored but still looking crisp and tasty

Instead of dilly beans or dilly asparagus this year, I was moved to try to pickle some jalapenos. Charlie and I stopped at the Yakima fruit stand and raided their huge pepper section for a great big bag. This morning I donned my surgical gloves and got chopping. There were loads of recipes online and the simplest one sounded the best to me. No complicated spices or other vegetables. Just vinegar, water, salt, and a snippet of bay leaf in each jar. I suspect that next year I may want to add a grape leaf for snap, but I didn't feel like leaving the house on this cold rainy day to steal yet another handful of grape leaves from the winery. They're bound to get suspicious sometime!

today: boiling a huge pot of water and steaming up the windows

measuring out peppers

The fruit market also had some irresistible italian plums (sorry Mona, I was too lazy to come pick some of yours!) and I got a tiny bag. Just enough for a small batch of an experimental jam: italian plum contreau. I am a huge fan of liqueur in my jams. The color is a beautiful regal purple and unlike the pickles I was able to eat some jam from a spoon once it had cooled down enough. It has a surprisingly orange-forward taste, almost bitter in a classic marmalade way. I'm not quite sure how the flavors will mellow in the jars but for right now it is unique and delicious.

lovely contrast: green peppers and plummy jam

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Harry is happy that the weather has cooled

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Eggs laid in the coop this year: 674
(the girls have been laying and I'm keeping track, I've just been lazy in posting it here)

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** did you notice that I have THREE boxes of pickling salt? It seems to be one of those things that you can never remember whether you have it or not so you buy more. Mom found my surfeit to be quite entertaining.