Canning Blitz

Here are the results of a few days of canning condensed into one post (prepare yourself).

First the rest of the peaches became “spreadable spicy peaches” (from the Ball Book of Complete Home Preserving) when we mixed them with apples, apple juice concentrate and lemon juice. It cooked down to a nearly jam like consistency and was ladled into hot jars and processed. (But first we taste tested it and decided that although it was supposedly sweetened with the unsweetened apple juice concentrate it really wasn’t sweet enough so we added another cup of sugar which was just enough to bring out the peach flavor over the sourness of the apples.)

We still had some peaches leftover and faced with a potential mutiny if Dad wasn't allowed to make a peach pie (or maybe crumble, which I prefer) we took the rest of the peaches which had already been peeled, pitted and halved and mixed them with sugar and froze them in freezer bags to become instant peach pie (or crumble).

Ever vigilant for frugal opportunities, as Mom and I went to dump out the lemon juice and water mixture that the peaches had floated in (while waiting to be cut up, to avoid browning) we noticed that it had alot of peach pulp in it. We tasted it and realized it was actually quite good so with the addition of some sugar we had a nice light peachy lemony drink. Mixed 50/50 with homemade sun tea with it was very yummy. It was a nice accidental byproduct of the canning process.

(And the truth comes out, now you know how messy our table usually is. Once we start experiencing landslides of circulars we know its time to clean.)

Next we did pickled zucchini slices. This would be a great way to put away those extra zucchinis that are piling up faster then you can eat them…if this is something you have to deal with. In which case I don’t really feel that sorry for you. I guess I’m a little bitter since all our zucchini plants basically bit the dust without ever doing much at all. My bitterness only grew at having to actually go to the grocery store and BUY zucchini, something no gardener should have to do.

Like the bread and butter pickles, this project involved a lot of quarter inch slicing (although I refused to make these slices diagonal, that just seemed unnecessarily difficult). I could probably make perfect quarter inch slices in my sleep (although lets hope no one finds out if that’s true).

Flash forward a few days and we are now back to watermelon. Although I had already done a batch of watermelon rind pickles I realized that I had already promised to give away as many jars as I had made which would have left none for me. So we went out and bought two more watermelons, although these were from the grocery store instead of organic.

I went through the tedious task of cutting the watermelons into one inch think slices, cutting the flesh away from the rind, peeling the rinds and cutting them into two inch long sections. These sat in salt water overnight and when we checked them the next day we found that they weren’t nearly as tender as the last batch had been after brining so these actually ended up getting simmered in the cooking liquid until they were tender. I also went the more traditional route for flavoring and opted for cinnamon instead of ginger (which my previous batch was, and I really liked).

(Look at me go!)

Since we had all that leftover watermelon (two small watermelon’s worth) I perused the Ball book for ideas and was inspired by “Zesty Watermelon Jelly” which the cookbook boasted had a “beautiful pink” color and “unique” lemongrass flavor. (Conveniently I had some lemon grass stems in the freezer.) I’m sorry to say this recipe was a lot more trouble then it was worth.

First of all it called for a jelly bag in order to make watermelon juice. We went to look for suitable fabric and we found some but it said it had a permanent press chemical applied to it and after some research we were reluctant to use it for food. So we resorted to cheesecloth but the mesh in it is so big that we ended up having to double it up to avoid getting pulp in our juice.

Finally we had our watermelon juice (which didn’t actually taste that great, kind of like pumpkin, probably the fault of bad grocery store watermelons) but we forged ahead thinking it might be improved with some sugar.

The next step in the saga was obtaining liquid pectin. I accidentally bought powdered pectin so we had to go back and get the liquid kind. And after all that what do you think happened? Our jelly didn’t gel right. We swear we followed the instructions correctly and here’s the strange thing. We had a small bit that didn’t fit in jars so that went into the fridge and that portion jelled perfectly! But our processed jars appear to be completely liquid. I tried sticking one in the fridge for a day and that helped a little but it’s not really jelled. So in despair we put them in the basement. We may try it in a few weeks to see if it has improved but if not we’ll probably just trash it.

(And I'm sorry, but those are NOT a beautiful pink color!)

But wait, there’s more!

Finally we did green tomato and apple chutney. I actually got the recipe from a great blog: The Slow Cook. We decided to go ahead and pick some of our tomatoes green because the plants are doing so badly some of them are dying with green tomatoes on the vine. At least this way we got something out of the plants. The recipe involves simmering green apples with green tomatoes, brown and white sugar, vinegar, onions, garlic, raisins, salt and lots of yummy spices. I look forward to eating it with lots of Indian food this winter (especially since I bought a huge one pound jar of curry powder).



If you’re tired from reading this post imagine how tired we are from doing all that canning? I hope with that in mind you can forgive me for going for a while without a post.

The Great Watermelon Rind Pickle Experiment: Part 1

It’s an argument that has repeated itself many times: my mom and I are in the pickle aisle at the grocery store and I spot a jar of pickled watermelon rinds. I get excited and say I want them to which my mom replies “you won’t like them.” I don’t know if this works on young children but it usually discourages me. But after a recent discussion with a neighbor who declared her love for pickled watermelon rinds I was emboldened.

The most logical way to try something new like watermelon rind pickles would be to buy a jar for a few dollars at the grocery store and sample them. But I like to make things difficult so I decided to buy a whole watermelon and make them myself.

Since we were going to be using the rind itself I decided to splurge and get an organic watermelon from our local farmer’s market. Although this made the experiment more expensive I rationalized it by telling myself that although the watermelon was five dollars (and weighted a little over five pounds) the rind would have been thrown away anyway and was therefore technically free.

Our first surprise came when we cut the watermelon open. It was yellow! Although I had heard of yellow watermelon I was unaware that I had bought one (if that is the fault of me or the person who wrote the signs we may never know). Sadly the conclusion among my family was that the yellow watermelon wasn’t actually as watermelony as red watermelons.

But I proceeded with the pickling. First I sliced the watermelon into 1 inch slices (ok I’ll admit it, my dad actually did it, I hate cutting melons). Then I cut the flesh off of each rind (I actually did that part). Once I’d put all the flesh aside to be nibbled (that sounds grosser then it actually was) I peeled the green part of the rind off with a potato peeler and cut the rinds into approximately 1 by 2 inch pieces. These pieces got layered with salt, weighted down, covered with water and then they sat overnight.


The next day we thoroughly washed the rind pieces and when we tasted them we discovered they were already edibly soft and surprisingly watermelon flavored. Although the recipes I consulted wanted me to boil the watermelon for either 10 or 15 minutes until fork tender I decided to forgo this step since the watermelon already seemed tender enough to me.

One recipe wanted me to boil the rind in the pickling liquid for a long time (I think it said at least an hour) while another recipe wanted me to bring the liquid to a boil then pour it over the rind and let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours. I thought that boiling it for an hour seemed like it would have made it too mushy so I opted for the latter choice and heated the pickling liquid and poured it over the rind and let it sit.

Although most recipes call for the rinds to be flavored with cinnamon I instead decided to use fresh ginger, a suggestion I had found in a recent issue of Cooking Light magazine. I also used cider vinegar instead of white vinegar so my rinds may be more brownish then most.


The worst part is that I have to wait to see how they came out, I’m very excited. Although mom had initially been reluctant when I suggested doing a second batch she relented when we realized we had already promised to give away 2 jars, and had only made 2 jars, which meant we wouldn’t have been able to try them. So we’ll just have to make more!