After a long hiatus, Preservation Shell and I decided to make ketchup and pickled jalapenos.
   Although it's not cheaper to make your own ketchup than to stop by the store when you consider time, materials, and food stuffs -  the result is amazing!   Home made ketchup is free of high fructose corn syrup, meaning less filler and more flavor. Our ketchup is a thick brick red concoction of canned tomatoes stewed in a crock pot for several days.  Its has hints of savory herbs and spices and has already proved a hit in my household.
  The complementary pickled jalapenos are perfect on nachos, pizza, hot dogs or hamburgers (or your favorite vegetarian substitute).  I'm looking forward to that special occasion when I can gather around the table with friends for that unique and special treat. 
  Speaking of special occasions... my amaryllis is finally beginning to bloom!

I have started looking for a permanent home for the Preservation Pals. Our awesome real estate agent saw my shelves of beautiful canned food and referred me to \Marisa McClellan, an acquaintance of his who's job was teaching preservation!

I took a look at her blog and it's excellent and highly recommend checking it out.

http://www.foodinjars.com/

I have a food scrap saving habit. Every time I chop up an onion I save the ends and the skin. The same goes for garlic peels, carrot skins, celery ends, herb stems and the list goes on. It's very simple to save items that would otherwise get composted into material that makes excellent, rich tasting stock for essentially no cost. Take your scraps and keep throwing them in a bag in the freezer (I call mine the stock pile, yes, I know) and when the bag gets full, it's time to can! Preservation Rob, my right hand man, helped me with this since it was the first time we used our new pressure canner.

The stockpile had grown so large that we had to use our water bath canner to make the actual stock. We simply dumped the whole mess in, added enough water to cover it and lots (probably about 1/3 cup) of salt. Bring it all to a boil, than lower the temp and simmer one hour.


After the simmering was done, we strained all of the veggie matter out and put it into the compost. We filled the jars as we went along once the measuring cup was filled. Jars that are being pressure canned do not need to be sterilized ahead of time, only clean and ready to go.



After all the jars were filled, lids were in place and rings screwed on, we were ready to pressure can in our new, awesome Wisconsin Foundry All American Pressure Canner. This is the best pressure canner ever. It's made in Wisconsin, has a metal to metal seal (eliminating rubber seals that wear out quickly) and is ultra safe with it's screw down wing nut design. The only drawback is that it's really heavy.

We ended up having about 9 quarts total; 7 we canned and 2 we left out for immediate use.

We canned it at 15 pounds pressure for 20 minutes.


















Everything turned out excellent. Our stock was ultra sealed with no damage.

Preservation Shell has a habit of saving scraps. Onion tops, garlic ends, herb stems and potato peels all make excellent, delicious vegetable stock for what amounts to being free.

Some of the scrap saving includes citrus peels. Juicing a lemon or lime? Throw the rind in a bag and freeze it. Want to eat an orange? Add that peel to the bag. After a little while you'll have yourself enough material to make mixed peel marmalade. Mixed peel marmalade will be very tart and flavorful, more like British marmalade than American. Mine turned out a deep earthy orange color.

After consuming a delicious jar of homemade Kosher dill pickles, you're left with the brine. It seems a shame to waste a perfectly good concoction, and that's when pickled mustard eggs are created! These eggs are both sweet, tangy, and spicy, and have a flavor reminiscent of the Appalachian favorite deviled eggs.


To make these eggs, you'll need:

1/2 jar pickle brine (pickling salt, pickling spice, dill, sugar)
10 hard boiled eggs
Mustard (to taste)


Hard boil the eggs, wait for them to cool, then peel your eggs. Next, dissolve the mustard in a small amount of brine. Add the solution to the jar, mix well, and taste. I used a spicy mustard, and depending how sweet your brine it already you could use a sweet mustard as well. Place the eggs carefully in the jar and cap. Let sit two weeks in the refrigerator, gently shaking now and again to redistribute spices that have settled on the bottom. Enjoy!