From this to 12 jars of Hot Pepper Jelly
This set is super hot, plus it didn't set as well as I'd like but still good
Showing posts with label How does your garden grow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How does your garden grow. Show all posts
My last harvest of 2011
This weekend I decided to winterize my garden as the organic garden was just about done.
This is my last harvest, not bad huh. Now I need to find something to do with all those chilli peppers! Any ideas?
Check out this pepper jelly recipe from Amy @Rockindeals4you
Peppers…Jalapeno, Banana, green…what ever you like – Enough for 2 cups
- 2 Cups cider vinegar
- 6 cups sugar
- 2 pouches Ball Liquid Fruit Pectin
Puree peppers in food processor (you can add some of the vinegar if needed)
Combine the peppers with vinegar and sugar
Bring this to a boil over high heat and boil for 10 mins
Stirring frequently
Once it comes to a full boil, then add the pectin
Once it comes to a full boil, then add the pectin
Bring to another full boil
Boil for 1 minute
Remove from the heat
Fill your jars, leaving at least 1/4 head space
Process jars for 10 mins
I love adding pepper jelly to a cracker with some cream cheese! Wonderful combination.
I think I'm going to make some of these pepper jelly's and give these out as Christmas gifts to friends and family....
I think I'm going to make some of these pepper jelly's and give these out as Christmas gifts to friends and family....
Capturing a little bit of summer
In the last two days I've canned 5 jars of stewed tomatoes, 1 jar of pickles and am freezing 4 bags of green beans. There is nothing better than cooking with fresh vegetables from the garden in the dead of winter. Canning and freezing vegetables are secon best to eating these straight from the garden!
How does your garden grow this summer?
Check out my other How Does Your Garden Grow posts here
Can't live without....
July has seen sizzling temperatures and with an organic garden this has taken a toll on my plants as well as my water bill. One thing I can't live without is my rain barrel. I have one attached to my water spout and any time it rains (which is scarce) it fills so quickly and helps me water my garden.
I have a tan colored one which blends in with my stucco. However, I 'm looking for another one and this one is so cool!
Do you have one?
How Does your Garden Grow? Zucchini Relish Recipe
With 5 Zucchini's harvested from our garden I was able to can 4 jars of Zucchini relish last night
Oh how I'd love for you to be able to smell my house, the zucchini relish smells as good as it tastes. I used this recipe here. Hubby is not a big fan of onion whatsoever but I just couldn't exclude them. So now I need to figure out a way to get him to taste it.
I look forward to making some cucumber relish later
Now I need to find a pickling recipe for my beetroot - any ideas?
How Does your Garden Grow? I'm in a pickle..
I harvested around 8 pickling cucumber from our organic garden recently and so I just spent an hour making bread and butter pickles. Check out how to make bread and butter pickles here
According to the recipe we can eat them in 24 hours. They are so good I pickled a huge batch last summer and we were eating them through the winter.
How Does Your Garden Grow? Zucchini Bread Recipes
I decided to bake some Zucchini breads tonight after work as I had 5 zucchini sitting around doing nothing all day. See that big bad boy zucchini on the right - well I baked all these breads below with just that one bad boy
Note: the ones on the right are mini loaf tins
The recipe for the Chocolate Wave Zucchini recipe is found here - I get rave reviews from all who receive a loaf tin : )
The Lemony Zucchini recipe can be found here
We just tried the lemony zucchini bread and thought it was good - I think it needs a tad more sugar but the chocolate wave zucchini bread still wins hands down. In my opinion you can never win against anything with chocolate in it.
I picked another zucchini from the garden tonight so I'm back up to 5 more zucchinis so I think I'm going to try my hand at the sweet zucchini relish recipe tommorow
I picked this bad boy beet yesterday - anyone have a good recipe for pickled beet?
How Does Your Garden Grow: There's 5 in a bed and the little one said....
Look at the size of those leaves
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There's 5 in a bed and the little one said....
and there were a tonne of yummy zucchini recipes. So here's my top 5 zucchini recipes:
5. Shaved zucchini & Parmesan Salad
How Does your Garden Grow...?
How Does Your garden Grow Update
I haven't updated about my gardens for a few months now, September and October has been huge family travel months for us. Pure pleasure and fun ; ) so the garden has taken a back seat.
Yesterday's weather was so nice that sitting in the house blogging was not an option so I enrolled my children to assist me in taking down the tomato plants. While the tomato plants still had a lot of fruit on them we felt the need to close out the garden for the year. Plus we had a bunch of field mice living there who happen to love red tomatoes.
The kids had a great time harvesting the tomato fruit. This is just half of our harvest. Although a majority of the fruit was green I'm going to try to ripen them inside - I tried to keep a lot of the stalk on the tomato and I left these on my front bay window sill to ripen in the sun. If only half ripen I will still have a large amount for canning!
We harvested the eggplant and peppers too. Hopefully the peppers will turn red inside too!
I left the lettuce, carrots and brocolli still intact. Although the brocolli and carrot tops were demolished by animals - do field mice love brocolli and carrot? I'm hoping the carrots below ground are ok.
What a great bountiful harvest year! Next year is a New Year.
How does your garden grow update
I canned a couple more jars of whole plum tomatoes tonight as they were so ripe they wouldn't last till the weekend.
Here are the peeled tomatoes stewing before being placed in the sterilized canning jars.
My hubby finally found the Mrs Wages Create Salsa mix at Walmart.
We had been giving away a lot of the brandywine tomatoes to neighbors, friends, family and the school. So tonight I kept what we had and made salsa and canned them. The recipe was super easy, it only requires the tomatoes, salsa mix and 1/2 cup of white vinegar.
Here in this pic I was dropping the tomatoes in boiling water for 3 minutes to enable me to take the peel off easily.
Here's my canned veggie harvest for the night.
One of the little jars is the extra juice from the tomatoes stewing - couldn't bare to throw it out and the other jar was some roasted red peppers that I decided to can too.
My tomato plants are still bearing fruit. I'll be happy when I've harvested it all as it sure takes up a lot of time, but the end result is awesome.
How does your garden grow update
Two weekends ago we harvested our potatoes from the garden and I finally got around to using them in a recipe.
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Last night I made a Tangy Pan Fried Potatoes with a side of grilled chicken for dinner. I used the Nakano Seasoned Rice Vinegar that I received for the Nakano review and giveaway as the recipe looked so good.
Here's the recipe taken from the Nakano website Serves 6 to 8.
INGREDIENTS
3 lbs. russet potatoes
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced (optional)
3 jalapenos, seeded and minced
2 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. each ground coriander and salt
3 Tbsp. butter
1/3 cup NAKANO Seasoned Rice Vinegar Roasted Garlic or Original
3 Tbsp. water
DIRECTIONS
Peel potatoes and cut into 1/2 inch cubes. Place in a large bowl; toss with onion, garlic, jalapenos, cumin, coriander and salt.
Melt butter in a large skillet. (Use two pans, if needed, dividing butter and potatoes between pans.) Cook potatoes over medium to high heat 10 to 12 minutes, stirring frequently and scraping browned bits from pan. Add rice vinegar and water. Continue to cook until all liquid is evaporated and potatoes are tender, 6 to 8 minutes.
I found that the potatoes needed to be cooked for a lot longer than the specified times in the recipe but these potatoes went down well in our family dinner.
I canned another 4 pints of whole tomatoes with the harvested Plum Tomatoes. I prepped some bowl planters so I could sow some lettuce seeds as I think its the cutest thing to see a bowl of lettuce growing on your table.
We went out for breakfast on Saturday morning and I ordered a veggie eggs benedict which replaced the ham steak with spinach and grilled tomatoes - it was so yummy. I'm so excited as I have spinach growing and of course an abundance of tomatoes, so now I can make this at home this weekend.
Don't forget to sign up to the Nakano Seasoned Rice Vinegar Giveaway.
Contest ends September 3rd @ 9pm.
Contest ends September 3rd @ 9pm.
How does your garden grow update
We had a fun time this weekend harvesting from our organic garden.
We harvested our potato plants and pulled out some nice red potatoes. We have too much nitrogen in our soil (through the manure added) for potato plants and subsequently were growing wild (apparently you need more phosphorus so the energy will be diverted to the tubers rather the leaves). I'm using the potatoes in a recipe and will share this recipe soon.
Once again we harvested a huge basket of plum tomatoes and so I set about canning them all on Saturday - I canned 17 pints of stewed and whole tomatoes. I still have another basket full of plum tomatoes that haven't fully ripened yet and lots more green tomatoes on the plants. We've been giving away the Brandywine tomatoes as there's no way we can eat that many.
We also cut down our cucumber plants as they were done to make way for fall planting. I canned my final 4 quarts of bread and butter pickles for the season. I think thats a grand total of 30 quarts of pickles. I've given a few away but the rest is for my pickle monsters ; )
My eggplants are still growing strong and I have lots of babies growing.
Here's what I sowed yesterday for a Fall harvest:
Spinach
Lettuce
Cauliflower
Brocolli
Bak Choi
Carrots
Hope your gardens have been as plentiful for you
How does your garden grow update
Yesterday, I canned another 7 jars of tomatoes and 8 jars of pickled cucumber. I have another basket full of tomatoes in my kitchen and my 10 tomato plants still have a lot of green tomatoes left on them. I love organic gardening!
I made mac & cheese for dinner last night and added some tomatoes to the mix - so good especially with the extra sharp white cheddar cheese mixed in!
How does your garden grow update
We started our organic vegetable garden this year not only as a cost saving excercise by growing our own produce but also so that we can control what goes into our vegetables and therefore provide healthy organic food for our family. This project has been very successful so far and we still have a few more months left of harvest. In order to provide healthy food all year round I've started to can my harvest so that I can still get the fresh and healthy taste during the winter and spring months.
Yesterday, I spent the afternoon canning my tomatoes. I had a lot of ripe tomatoes ready for canning.
I ended up with 10 jars of tomatoes. During the winter months we love to make meatballs, spaghetti bolognese and pasta fagioli so these tomatoes will be used to make the sauce. I added some fresh oregano and basil too to give it a little Italian kick.
I also made another 6 jars of Mrs Wages Bread and Butter Pickles too as these have been going fast.
While I was on a roll in the kitchen yesterday I made another batch of eggplant parmesan as I had 2 eggplants that needed to be used. These don't seem to last long once you pick them. I just breaded them and cooked in olive oil and put them in the fridge. Tonight after work, I'll add some tomatoes and mozzarella cheese and bake them in the oven and add a side dish of pasta.
For my next batch I'm going to think a healthier version of eggplant parmesan as the breading and olive oil while very tasty seems a little unhealthy.
Whats cooking in your kitchen tonight?
