pickle party

Whew! As if the baking wasn't enough I found myself innundated with produce from the farm just begging to be pickled. It's actually not hard to do but a lot of standing on your feet, washing, sterilizing, boiling, etc. The results in the middle of winter make it all worthwhile.

I made several things out of my Oded Schwartz book Preserving. I really like this book, of course I like all of my books, but so far his recipes have never disappointed me.

I made eggplant garlic chutney. Something I've never made before. It's supposed to be good on sandwiches, with cheese, or meats. I had eggplant and garlic from the farm so I decided to go ahead and give it a try. It needs to mellow for a couple of weeks before we can try it.

Also on the list were pickled green tomatoes. I gleaned as many green cherry tomatoes as I could to make this. Some years, believe it or not, I don't have enough green tomatoes. This was never a problem when we lived in VT but here it is, especially since I now only plant 1 or 2 tomato plants.

In addition to picking the green ones I gleaned as many sungolds and grape cherry tomatoes as I could for sweet cherry tomato pickles. Mmmmmm. Sounds really good. I've never made it before. They need to sit for a couple of months but hopefully they will be worth the wait.

Tomato sauce, that's a given every year. We love using thing throughout the year, so much tastier than what you can buy in the grocery store.

Dilly beans. I think I'm the only one who really likes green beans but I make them anyway.

Luckily it was all small batch stuff 3-4 jars per batch. Otherwise I'd probably still be canning right now.