Making Pickles : Preserved Hot Pepper Rings and Dilled Cucumbers
A year and a half ago I wrote this post about Nick's first attempt at home preserving food. He'd never tried it before and his curiosity in the kitchen took him there. At that time, he had just bought a huge pot with a lid, some special tongs, a funnel with a wide opening and a boxes of Mason jars, and got busy preserving some tomatoes. Well, they turned out very well, and since then he's kept us and many of our friends stocked with home preserved tomatoes.
Once he'd learned the ropes he also began preserving pickled beets. He used to make them before -- shown here -- but they weren't sealed and sterilized by boiling, so had to be kept in the fridge. This meant we would have a big jar of beets taking up room in the fridge, and there was some waste because we just wouldn't get through them quickly enough. So, he began putting them in smaller jars and putting them in his cauldron the same way he did the tomatoes. Now they can be stored in the cupboard until a jar is opened.
Along the way he had to replace his special tongs with a more sturdy pair, but aside from buying additional jars and new lids (the jars come with lids but they're also sold separately, because you should use new lids with every batch in order to get a good seal), the only thing we've had to buy are the ingredients. A word about pickling salt -- make sure you use that as opposed to regular table salt because that has iodine added to it, which will keep you safe from developing gout but will ruin your pickles. Also, vinegar that is labeled "pickling" is necessary because it's more acidic than the regular stuff.
This all brings us to today and this post about Nick's newest home canning adventure : Pickled Hot Pepper Rings and Dill and Garlic Cucumbers.
Once we had all the ingredients, the supplies together, and the water boiling, the whole thing was done in under an hour, and we had six glistening jars looking pretty on the counter. Yes, we did keep popping back into the kitchen that evening to look at them. It's the small things, lol!
Finding the goods in Kensington Market (plus some gourds because they're so good looking and autumn-esque) ...
Mystery Solved : The Case of the Little Chestnut Tree
How to Add a Spout to a Canning Jar and a Recipe for Salad Dressing Using It
We eat tossed salads often and like to have them with a quick and easy homemade dressing that I've been making since I first began cooking. To save time, I make a lot of it at once and then store it in the fridge to use with several salads.
While I really like the dressing I've never been happy with the various containers I've tried to make it and then store it in. For a long time I used a re-purposed olive jar, but since you have to give the dressing a good shake when making it and then again whenever you serve it, the lid of the regular jar would get kind of gross. Also a regular jar didn't pour very well and was always drippy. Thirdly, it didn't look very nice on the table, so I would decant the dressing into a serving dish when we had company, which then required an additional ladle at the table.
This is a long way of saying that I love this new container we've been using lately, in which I make the salad dressing, serve it and seal and store it. It's just a regular 500ml canning jar (ours happens to be a Mason jar, although any brand of canning jar are called Mason jars by many people) -- these are the kind of jars that have those two part lids -- a flat piece and then a ring that attaches that to the jar. I've modified it by adding a spout with a screw on lid.
I first saw the idea to add a spout by using part of an empty juice container, on Pinterest, but that version didn't look very nice because you could see the writing that was on the original container. So I took the idea a step further by hiding all except the spout part of the juice container with a black (although the colour is up to you) piece of plastic, giving the the container a clean and sleek look that is nice enough to put on the table for company.
Our Middle-of-the-Night Art Adventure : Nuit Blanche 2015
Sunday Lunch at Old School
I recently posted a picture of me sitting on a bright red bench (see it here) outside a restaurant called Old School, located at 800 Dundas Street West, at Palmerston. I mentioned in that previous post that I wanted to try it out and I got my chance on Sunday when Meghan, Pam and I went out for a late lunch to celebrate Meghan's birthday.
The place is bigger than I expected, with nice high ceilings, two dining areas and a huge outdoor patio. I loved the black and white decor and the vintage tables and chairs. Well, I'll call the furniture "vintage-like" since all the tables and chairs were in such good condition that I assume they were made during this decade and not the 1950s, when this type of chrome and laminate kitchen furniture was commonly found.
Subscribe to my Youtube channel:
Recent Stories
Thrift Store FindsGoings On About the Garden : Late Summer 2015The Calm Before the Storm : Preparations for TIFFGreat Art, Music, Food and Friends = First Thursdays at the Art GalleryA Sunday Afternoon in the ParkDinner in the Garden with FriendsWhen Nothing to Do Was Just Right