Well, that may be stretching it. It’s more like the late middle as the tomatoes are just reaching peak and the new crop of lettuce is just up but things are definitely in the processing rather than rapid growth phase. The days are still hot but the nights much cooler. Fall is fast approaching and I feel that nesting instinct. I love to see my shelves fill with jars in assorted colors. I love the smell of wood smoke and cider. Fall is always busy but the work is easier as the temperature drops.
The kids are heading off to school this week. I’m anxious about my little school. We have only 9 kids in kindergarten and we are always battling TPTB who would love a reason to close us down and ship our children 20 miles away to the regional school. That happens when they get to the middle school anyway and I don’t like it then but I won’t send Phoebe if it happens any sooner. That means either home schooling or shelling out the money for the little private school in the next town. It’s parent run and inexpensive by today’s standards but $2000.00 is $2000.00 and I would rather Phoebe get to spend her elementary years in our little school. It’s a quick 5 minute walk away and the classes are so small, it’s like private school now. I e enjoyed homeschooling but Phoebe has special needs along with the attention span of a flea.I’m not sure I could keep up with her. I would be needing to work on her math lesson and she would want to be playing dress up.
Like Scarlett O’Hara. I will think about that tomorrow. Right now, I will think about pickles. A new reader asked about my pickle recipe.
First, walk around your garden. Notice the hidden colors; that bit of red pepper and the gold of carrot’s shoulder. Snow white cauliflower and bright green broccoli contrast with a yellow bean. Don’t overlook some baby Pattypans or zucchini. Pick a bit of this and a bunch of that. An onion is nice and a clove of garlic too. Now bring everything in and pour a glass of cider. This is for sipping, not the Jardiniere. For that you’ll need:
5 cloves of garlic
1.5 teaspoons peppercorns
20 allspice berries
some tarragon sprigs
2 3/4 cups white wine vinegar
2 cups water
1 tablespoon pickling salt
Wash all of the veges and cut any large things up into small pieces. Get 5 pint jars and wash well. I usually fill then with boiling water and let them sit for a few minutes, then pour the hot water into the canning pot. Now put a sprig of tarragon, some peppercorns and allspice berries and a clove of garlic into each jar. Bring the water, vinegar and salt to a boil in a non-reactive sauce pan. Pour the hot liquid over the veges, cap with hot lids and process in a boiling water bath for twenty minutes. Then store for at least 3 weeks before eating.
I usually do a much bigger batch than this as we eat this stuff by the quart rather than the pint. Then you need to process for 25 minutes. If you have some leftover, just put it, unprocessed in the refrigerator.
Someone asked about olive trees. We will never grow olives here. I put olives in the same category as coffee, tea and citrus. I try for a local diet but what I can’t grow, I can buy as a treat. Get the good stuff, responsibly grown and harvested and don’t overindulge. We will ship maple syrup down south and they can send us oranges for the occasional indulgence. It is a vastly different thing than eating iceberg lettuce in January.
September 1, 2010 at 9:25 am
Thank you thank you for the recipe! Wonderful!
September 1, 2010 at 10:55 am
This sounds very tasty. You just put the raw vegetables into the jars with the spices and then cover with the brine? The processing time doesn’t change depending on what kind of vegetables you use?
September 1, 2010 at 1:33 pm
No. The vinegar does a lot of the preserving.
September 5, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Hi Kathy, I do a lot of lacto-fermentation for my veggies, and wanted to share my super easy and super delicious recipe for dill pickles.
First dissolve some salt in water. I usually put a couple of heaping tablespoons of salt into a half-gallon jar of water and let it sit for a few while I cut up the veggeis. It has to be non-chlorinated water, and non-iodized salt (kosher, pickling salt, sea salt, celtic salt all work fine.)
Since I tend to do only a few jars a day instead of big huge batches, this is what I put into just one jar:
2 cloves of garlic, sliced a bit
several black peppercorns
a pinch or two of coriander seeds
sprig of dill
Cut up cucumbers in any way you think is pretty, stuff the jar up to an inch or so below the top, then pour the salt water in until it covers them all. Cover and tighten the lid; then store for about 6 weeks or so before you open and eat it. I keep them in my basement.
That’s it. Nothing else, no boiling, no vinegar, no bad-for-you sugar. The result is DELICIOUS. You can do this same process with other vegetables too – I like to change things up a bit by varying the spices: sometimes a bit of powdered stevia and cloves (great with beets), or habaneros and green pepper, or cherry tomatoes with garlic.
September 5, 2010 at 9:07 pm
I am going to do this tommorrow. I have more bits of things to use up and this is perfect. I love the simplicity. Do you scald the jars first or just wash them well?
September 6, 2010 at 10:40 am
I just wash them well. The microorganisms cannot develop in a solution with a high concentration of salt (which is why the food remains preserved.) It does promote the growth of lactobacilli however, which is wonderful for the digestion (probiotics) and also promotes your body’s ability to make and absorb B vitamins.
I tend to be one of those cooks that just throws in “a dash of this” and “a handful of that” and have a hard time sticking to strict recipes. Upon reviewing my recipe above, I realize that I normally use more salt than that – when using coarse-grain Celtic salt, I do use two heaping tablespoons-full. But when I use the finer-grained ordinary pickling salt, I put in three or four tablespoons-full. You can also lacto-ferment with whey, but I haven’t tried it yet, since for me salt is much easier to store.
September 6, 2010 at 11:41 am
[...] Harrison has a fabulous recipe for Jardiniere – I’ve tried it, it is [...]
September 7, 2010 at 8:59 am
Fall is my favorite season. I cant’ wait to see what autumn in Colorado is like! This will be my first time canning, when I get my apartment/house in the next couple of weeks, and I’m very excited about it! Just have to FIND the canner, lol! Am also considering buying a smoker – a friend had one this summer and kept making the most delicious things in it! Elk jerky, smoked salmon, steaks… yum.