Food on Friday

And I know it is Saturday. Yesterday was wild. One minute it was 6:30 a.m. and then it was dark. So there you have it.

We brought peaches home with us from vacation. Not unusual. We are usually in Missouri at the height of peach season so we eat them while we are there and then we bring a bushel home. This years crop was wonderful meltinyourmouth good. But they didn't hold as well as they usually do. So I was forced to think of some way to use them up--and quick.

So I made JAM!!

I used my red and white checked cookbook recipe and TA DA!! Jam!


It isn't real thick, but it tastes wonderful. The first batch made a dozen 1/2 pint jars--which I water bathed to seal-- and I doubled the second batch (11 cups of sugar) and it made 17 1/2 pint jars. I sort of peeled the peaches using the hot water dip then ice water dip and I dropped the peaches into my food mill to puree. Got some peel in the first batch, but did better the second batch.

Mr. Wonderful thinks that we should add it to homemade ice cream to make peach ice cream. Get started making ice cream was my response.

Most of us have had our peach jam fix daily on toast. MMMMMM....so good.


Then I got wild. At book club, my favorite retired school nurse mentioned that she had some beets. Oh, I love beets. So she dropped some beets at my house. And then guess what? I made pickled beets!

The recipe called for 10 pounds of beets but I only had 5. The recipe also called for quart jars but I knew that would be way too many beets in one jar so I used 1/2 pint jars. Perfect! It made a dozen jars. The recipe also called for cloves, but my good friend Becky Homecky suggested that I skip the cloves unless I really loved cloves. Eh, not so much. Did you know that if you have your wisdom teeth out and you get dry socket they pack your sockets with clove oil gauze? Lets just say I no longer love cloves.

And these pickled beets rock. I ate a whole jar the first day. Mr. Wonderful and I are the only ones who will eat them and he really only likes a few.

Aren't they pretty?


And then....I made pickles! I had some pretty good help on this little adventure. My other favorite not retired school nurse helped me out a WHOLE bunch. I called to pick her brain about pickle making and she supplied me with everything I would need to make pickles....cukes, lime and seasonings plus expert tips! She was done with pickle season because she had put up 50 quarts of pickles and felt like that would get them through the year. 5o? Oh my.

This was a 3 day process. I ended up with 3 quart jars of pickles and 6 pint jars of pickles. I probably could have packed them tighter but I had enough brine so it was fine.

The recipe was very easy to follow and with my expert tips.....I have some fairly decent sweet pickles. Not as good as my other favorite not retired school nurse...but pretty darn good. They look lovely. I am darn proud of my self.




I had a very good time canning. If it weren't for the lack of electricity and indoor plumbing, I would have made a real good pioneer woman.

Eh...or not.

And we still have zucchini. Just sayin'.