Canning!

If you follow me on twitter (and you should...srsly), you might have noticed my tweet last night saying I was simultaneously watching the crazy broads on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and pickling peppers. Canning is something I've always wanted to do, but until recently, I found that the materials were rather a pain in the rear to procure. Until now. A month or so ago, I noticed that Target has a new line of Ball jar canning/preserving supplies, including pectin, pickling salt, jars, utensils, and an awesome kit, which includes a gigantic pot with a rack.

Because of garden overflow, I've been at a loss with what to do with all my peppers and tomatoes. I'm not going to lie that I was forced to throw some veggies out because I couldn't keep up with my harvest. Not anymore, suckafaces! I purchased the canning kit from Target on Sunday and got to work pickling my peppers! I used this recipe for pickled pepperoncini peppers, since that's what I had an overflow of at the time.

I started by washing and trimming the peppers, then cutting a slit in each pepper. I then soaked the peppers in salt water overnight. Tonight, I made the pickle solution, sterilized the jars, canned the peppers and then jarred those suckers. And it was easy as pie.

The cured peppers after soaking in salt water overnight

The pickling liquid

Sterilizing the jars

Packing the peppers

The pickled peppers cooling on a towel. They will have to cool overnight and I suspect that as the peppers absorb the pickling liquid more, they'll drop a bit. They were packed to the bottom but floated to the top during processing.

I've tried my hand at canning before, but didn't feel like I really had the right utensils/materials. Now I do and I'm excited to can the remaining crop from the garden which I am pulling this week. I was supposed to do it last week, but honestly, it was hard for me to go into the garden last week having spent my whole summer there with my dog. I'm pulling the rest of our tomatoes, zucchini, spaghetti squash, a few errant carrots, and whatever other veggies are remaining. I'm also going to cut the remaining flowers and have some pretties in my apartment. Then, I'm letting the sweet potato plants dry up so that I can pull them. My team and I will ready the hoop house for a fall lettuce and spinach crop that we will plant next week. And then everything else will be pulled in a few weeks when the plants die off and are dried out a bit more. I'm sad to see my garden go, but am excited about the expansion that I'm trying to make happen for next summer and what I'm going to grow next year. And now with my canning skills, I'm even more confident about what to do with my large harvests.

(Photos by me!)