Daily Archives: September 13, 2011

Preservation time

The big news this week is that we have no choice but to find ways to preserve things. We can’t give stuff away fast enough any more. The first time you heat up that water bath and start preparing jars for canning, it’s pretty exciting. Every time after that, it’s just a lot of work.

We sliced and stewed about a hundred tomatoes, put them in bags, and stuck them in the freezer. We’ll make something with them later.

Next we blanched hundreds of tomatoes, peeled them, and made more than 2 gallons of salsa. The salsa was necessary, because the peppers have been coming in like crazy. We used something like 6 cups of chopped Anaheim peppers, 2 cups of chopped Jalapeño peppers, and several large bell peppers in the salsa. We cooked it, poured it into jars, and canned it. Fresh salsa is so much better than canned salsa, but we’ll be able to use this salsa all winter, when fresh salsa just isn’t an option.

Making salsa didn’t use all the tomatoes, and it didn’t come anywhere close to using all the peppers I had picked that day. I was still staring at a gallon of peeled tomatoes, 70 or 80 Jalapeño peppers, and 15 or 20 extremely large Anaheim peppers.

I looked up a recipe for Jalapeno Jelly. I picked one and doubled it. Then I doubled the number of Jalapenos in it. I wanted my jelly to have some kick. I also swapped the vinegar for half lemon and half lime juice. I threw all the peppers and lemon juice into the blender and pushed the smoothie button. It turned into a foamy green smoothie. I tasted a bit of it. It was really good. It tasted like a very tart citrus drink, but then moments later your mouth and throat burned. I was a little worried I had over done it with the peppers, but it was too late to change. All in all, I think we used about 40 Jalapeños in that recipe that made twelve 4 ounce jars and one 12 ounce jar of jelly. After it cooled, it wasn’t hot. It barely has any kick at all. And it doesn’t taste all that great. I’m pretty disappointed. The Habanero jelly we made last year was much much better. Oh well.

We still had 30 or 40 Jalapeño peppers sitting there and I was out of ideas. Luckily, those are the easiest pieces of produce to give away. Everyone loves them. Charmaine took them to work (along with a whole load of other stuff) and got rid of them all.

As for the rest of the tomatoes, we had Charmaine’s parents over for dinner, so we used some of the peppers and the remaining tomatoes in a pasta sauce with some fancy noodles we picked up at Tony Caputo’s Market in Salt Lake. It turned out really well.

Today I noticed some bright yellow Ají Limóns in the garden. Just last week they were completely green, but now they are a beautiful bright yellow. They’re fairly hot. I can eat a fresh Cayenne pepper without too much crying, but I can’t get through one of these Ají Limóns… and yet, I am somehow compelled to keep trying.