Just Beet It. .

It was time for beet harvest last weekend!! I'm not good at knowing which ones should stay in the ground a little longer. .and since I had two small helpers. .ALL the beets came out. You'll notice in the pot, that there are some fairly good sized ones that should have come out weeks ago!! 

I looked through my blog, thinking I had posted my recipe before. .I couldn't find it. .and then I wasn't sure which recipe I had used! 

So. .I'm posting the recipe THIS year. .

so I can find it NEXT year!! 

I have only been growing beets for 3 years. .but they are a quick and easy crop. .needing harvested in the early summer before I'm sick of gardening!! It took a couple hours to harvest, boil, peel and can them. .but there was a lot of down time in between to multi-task!! They are sure pretty after they are cooked up!! I had a big soup pot full of them to simmer! 

Usually when I can beets, I just use the soup pot to can a few jars. .this time I pulled out my water bath canner. .which held all 8 jars! Our family doesn't really like beets fixed any other way. .and you can't BEET them with hamburgers as a side dish. . 

Or straight out of the jar!! 

Happy Monday!!

Beet Pickles

Or. .in Kansas. .

we call 'em. .

Pickled Beets!

3 qts (12 cups) sliced beets (see below) (or about 24 small beets)

2 cups sugar

2 sticks cinnamon

1 tbsp whole allspice

1 1/2 tsp salt

3 1/2 cups vinegar

1 1/2 cups water

Wash beets. .leave root and about 1 inch of the green tops intact. place in a pot of water and boil until they are tender. .anywhere from 20 minutes for the smaller ones to 40 minutes for very large, out of control-sized beets, like mine! The skins will then slip right off and you can slice them about 1/4 inch thick. The smallest beets can be left whole. Combine the rest of ingredients in a large pot. Bring mixture to a boil; reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes or so. Pack beets into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Ladle hot brine over beets, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Adjust 2-piece caps. Process pints and quarts 30 minutes in a boiling water bath canner. 

My crop was nearly a double recipe. .which yielded 4 quarts and 4 pints. 

Let them set for about a week before eating. .We just finished our last jar from last summer this past weekend. They were as yummy as they were back then!

Salsa Day 2010

Today was the day!! Doesn't Lisa look all nice and fresh??  She came a'knockin' around 9:15 this morning, aprons in hand, all ready for the salsa fiesta!! We look great when we start--and a little soupy by the end of the day!

We have our method down to a science now!! (I found the picture Lisa!!) Here we are that first year of making salsa back in 2003.  In my old kitchen, with one tiny pot and that antique blue enamelware canner (which now graces the top of my cabinets as decoration!!).  We used only the ingredients from my garden, and made probably enough salsa to last us a month.  I had been canning for a while, but it was Lisa's first experience.  I have to say it was love at first bite!! She was hooked. 

We have been making salsa every year since then!  We found that we could make a lot more salsa if we bought ingredients to enhance what we grew.  We also decided that huge cans of tomatos that are already washed, skinned, diced, and measured are our friends!  We graduated from those two tiny pots, to the operation you see in my blurry picture above--a pressure canner (that we operate on our propane grill--ingenius right??), a water bath canner, and two huge pots of salsa cooking happily on the stove at all times.  On the back countertop, you will also find two more pots filled with ingredients, waiting for their moment on the stove!  We usually get right to work.  It's beautiful harmony, our salsa-makin' music!! We have done it so many times that we just work--saying little about what needs to be done next--we just DO, chit chatting in between chops, measures, spills, and tastes. 

We have also tweaked our original recipe multiple times--and developed 2 other flavors from it--including chipotle and cilantro/lime.  In addition, we use a pressure cooker to can our fouth flavor--a knock off recipe from a local Mexican restaurant.  We didn't like the flavor with all the vinegar needed to safely can it (it was a recipe used for eating fresh), so we learned to pressure can.  Because there are only four burners and only so much cooktop space, we discovered 3 years ago, that the side burner on our gas grill works magically--and provides extra stress calorie-burning opportunities as we constantly run out to the deck to check the steam blow off valve and the pressure gauge (wow, that sounds tech-y doesn't it :-) But, you do what you have to do!! Last year we made a new recipe called "mix." Because we inadvertantly dumped half of one pot into another pot and then had no idea what was what.  Of course it was terrific! (Lisa, Dev went through every jar today looking for one that was labeled 'mix'! and was very irritated when he didn't find one and found out we didn't even MAKE one!)  This year we played around with black pepper, liking the results! We also got a wild hair and tried peach salsa, with some peaches from my tree that were in the freezer.  And other than the fact that it was the most hideous looking stuff you have EVER seen (like vomit in a jar. .or calf scours. .or. .well you get the picture), it wasn't that bad.  We decided it would be good served over cream cheese with crackers--look out potlucks, here we come!

By around 4:00, we were down to dealing with the mess as we waited on the last jars to can.  We wiped tomato off the floors, the canisters, the walls, the cabinets, and each other.  Our feet hurt, our backs hurt, some of us dealt with carpal tunnel from opening lids, while others of us nursed burning jalepeno hands.  But our hearts were full, and glad, and satisfied! 

We enjoyed each other's company while we worked and played.  At the end of the day, we had around 124 pints of salsa to carry home!! Next year we might hire Camille to help--after all, she can count well, proclaims how beautiful the salsa is, and is good at dumping things in a bowl--if your salsa is a liiiitttle tooooo hot, it may be because someone dumped in some red pepper flakes that were meticulously measured out into her measuring cup while no one (in charge) was looking!! Milk is great for taking heat out of your mouth. . .just sayin'!

Late Summer Garden

The last few weeks have found the garden producing well.  I have been picking lots of okra.  Last week I canned about 8 pints of pickled okra.  I had canned a few jars before that and we tried them out on our vacation--to see if they were any good--we all liked them!! YAY!! We have been frying up a few to eat too.  I think that I will definitely be growing that again next year.

We have picked 2 watermelon.  The first one we ate was pretty good, though I have had better.  The second one is sitting on the counter awaiting a fork!

The tomatos have finally started to amount to something worth picking! The big fat romas will start going into the freezer until salsa making day this fall.  The celebrity tomatoes have been much nicer and I am happier with them now than I was a month ago--I was ready to rip them all out then--they were some ugly tomatos!! Must have been the conditions. .  .surely not the gardener!! They are great now.  I planted a cherry tomato bush too, only because I got a free one from Stutzman's last spring.  The kids are eatin' faster than they can be picked!!  I believe that I will include that in next summer's garden too!

The peppers are producing fairly good.  The purple Pinot Noir peppers from the greenhouse have lots of peppers on them, but they are pretty small.  They are the most beautiful eggplant purple pepper you have ever seen! Puts new meaning into the rhyme "picked a peck of purple peppers!!"  I am sad that there aren't more bell peppers--but after the non-germination and oven fiasco last spring, I had hoped the late seeded ones would be farther along than they are now.  But they aren't.  I think that I will dig them out of the flower bed and pot them up for the greenhouse. If they don't shock too badly, they may produce by Thanksgiving.  The hot peppers have been great. I have canned a few jars.  Jeremy loves the jalepeno rings on anything.  I just use the same brine that goes over the okra--so I usually do a few jars of each.  Last night when I got home from a church youth planning meeting, Jeremy was just beaming.  He had made pico de gallo--without a recipe--just a recollection of how I told him that I was going to make it this week.  What a stud!! It was DELISH!!  We gorged ourselves nearly sick. YUUM!

The peaches (our first peach crop) will be ready to deal with in the next few days.  Any evening the guys (all of them) can be found standing around that tree picking the peaches that the wasps are dining on, munching them down, and throwing the pits over the fence.  I thinkest that, with the right conditions, I may have a lot of small peach trees to be giving away!! :-)

They are a little small, but the taste so far has been good! The birds are checking them too. . and some of the shop customers have been caught with their hand in the peach tree!

Not sure what I will do with them all, but likely will freeze most of them.  Has anyone ever frozen peaches whole, skin and all?? Just wonderin' if I can do that with some of them and then peel them later to cut up and use?  They would certainly skin easier that way--Might just have to experiment!

So Tuesday night when I got home from work, I saw that my mother in law had stopped by with a sack of tomatoes and a large sack of nearly ripe pears (YUCK).  I personally hate pears--it's a texture thing--but my guys love them, so I will need to find something to do with the ones that can't be eaten quickly enough!

AND THEN. . .

our crazy Okie friend brought up five (one, two, three, four, FIVE) 5 gallon buckets full of cucumbers, squash, zucchini, hot peppers, cantalope, tomatoes, and a watermelon!! 1 bucket went on to my dear fanatic canning friend yesterday.  And she was still talking to me today!! So this afternoon finds me trying to deal with all of this food! I have a batch of dill relish and a batch of sweet relish standing in a salt bath for a while before I spice them and can them up.  I will grate and freeze the zucchini, which NO one in this house will eat, unless it is sweetened in a loaf of steaming bread!! The tomatos will be cleaned and frozen, and the hot peppers ringed, brined and canned.  C will enjoy an extra afternoon at the sitter's, which will be much more entertaining to her and a lot more work conducive for her mother!!

So for now--much love from

a Martha Stewart wannabee