Sunday, August 29, 2010

1st canning of 2010

On a rainy Saturday I realized that with the garlic and sweet red peppers I had picked up at the farmers market and the tomatoes, peppers and onions I got in my CSA share I had the makings for some salsa. I had recently purchased the Ball Home Canning Discovery Kit, a pretty neon green plastic basket with handles meant to can small batches (3 jars) in regular old pots, so I set out to make the basic salsa recipes. I swapped out sweet red, red bell and a banana pepper for the spicier options in the recipes and used one roma that I had leftover from the store.  It went quite quick with the help of my electric hot water kettle to boil water to remove the skins of the tomatoes  and before I had imagined it I had 3 jars of salsa cooling on the counter. The measurements were precise, fitting in the three jars that came with the kit. I had forgotten to even taste how the salsa came out on canning day but I opened the first jar to serve with taco salad and it was perfect, sweet and mild like I like it.

While I was at it I diced up some of the over ripe peaches and mixed up 2 quarts of peach freezer jam that I intend to use as pie/tart filling in the fall.