picked a peck of pickled...

How much is a peck? According to Wikipedia, a peck is an "imperial and US customary unit of dry volume, equivalent in each of these systems to 2 gallons, 8 dry quarts, or 16 dry pints. Two pecks make a kenning (obsolete), and four pecks make a bushel." I'm not sure the difference in a "dry quart" versus a wet quart or other types of quart.

But, this weekend I made roughly 16 pints of pickles. 6 half pint jars of pickle chips, 2 pint jars pickle spears, 3 quart jars pickle spears (with some extra chips thrown in), plus 2 quart jars of pickled carrots that I'm very excited to try.

For the pickles, I love dill pickles so I used a variation on this. We were out of whole peppercorns, I so used 1/2 tablespoon ground white pepper and 3/4 tablespoon ground black pepper. Plus a generous shake of cardamon seeds. And then followed the recipe, estimating on the dill per jar.

By the time I got to the carrots, I was tired. I had a large bag of local carrots and wanted to pickle them but didn't have a recipe. I google searched and found a few then improvised.

I kept the 2 1/2 cup vinegar to 5 cup water ratio, not bothering to empty out the saucepan so it still had the dregs of the pickle mix. I added 1/2 cup sugar, more ground mustard and salt (1 tbsp each.) It smelled pretty good so I'm hopeful. Washed and peeled the carrots, cut the thicker ones in half and trimmed the ends, then poured the pickling mixture over top.

I canned them all in a hot water bath, though a few tipped over so I pulled them out early and stuck them in fridge to each sooner. I'm not sad about that, since I haven't broken into most of my canning goods so it will be nice to enjoy these pickles soon. In fact, I canned them on Saturday so they are ready today- I may have some tonight!

seconds for sauce

Last post I wrote about the tomato seconds I bought for our roommate dinner. Here they are in all their glory! Mostly smaller tomatoes, some cracked, and a mix of types. I set a few aside to eat over the next few days but used most of these to make tomato sauce.

I used this 'recipe' from Saving the Season, which is really more intructions for canning than anything else. I didn't peel the tomatoes due to laziness and tossed in some basil about halfway through the reducing process. When I use it for pasta I'll probably toss in more seasoning- salt, pepper, basil or oregano, red pepper flakes. Instead of worrying about canning, I just put in bags and froze the sauce. I have about a gallon split between three bags, all from maybe $7 of tomatoes and a few hours of stirring tomatoes every 15 minutes.

[Look how beautiful they are inside!]

[In the process of boiling down]

domestic bliss

Saturday I picked up 30 pounds of peaches (for $25!) for my roommate and I to can. We spent about 4 hours in the kitchen yesterday and managed to make 6 quarts of Canned Peaches in light syrup, 8 pints of Peach Barbecue Sauce which will work more as a marinade because we didn't dice the peaches as finely as we should have, and Blackberry Peach Jam which was the most expensive with $10 of blackberries making 2.5 pints of jam. Luckily it is delicious. We canned 2 pints and put the rest in a half pint jar in the fridge to eat now.

We ran out of steam and pint jars (and wanted to save the small amount of peaches left for eating fresh) so didn't make the peach salsa we planned or the peach pie we were supposed to have after dinner. Instead, our other roommate ordered us pizza to thank us for our work preparing the household for the long winter ahead.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to share of the process, it was too hot and busy in the kitchen to be thinking about taking photos!