Bread & Butter Pickles

Got these in my CSA bag today and made them tonight!  Didn't have dill to make dill pickles, but did have the ingredients for Bread & Butter Pickles thanks, once again, to Deb at SmittenKitchen.  Seem good, although I'll know better tomorrow.

Pasta with Artichokes and Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

Needed a quick side to go with leftover ham and had no fresh vegetables. I pulled out a bag of frozen artichokes I had grabbed at Trader Joe's along with some of my slow roasted tomatoes that I hadn't preserved. Basically I put the frozen artichokes in the pan with a small bit of water, brought it to a boil and then lowered the heat to fully defrost the artichokes. Then I added some olive oil and crushed garlic for a few minutes. Then I added the tomatoes and cooked it together until most of the tomato liquid was cooked off before adding some chicken broth to make a sauce. Added salt and the cooked pasta and that was that!

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

My second attempt at slow-roasting tomatoes worked out much better! This time I used a recipe I found online for Slow Roasted Tomatoes Kalyn's Way. I did 2 trays at once and it ended up taking about 8 hours. They had such a rich, deep flavor. They shrunk down to nothing and I ended up with 4 half-pint jars. I sealed them with a water bath for 85 minutes so they should last months now. Good thing they shrink down b/c I have a good 15 more huge tomatoes to preserve. I could try whole tomatoes I guess.

Beginning After 2 hrs

After 6 hrs At end after 8 hrs

Jammy Tomato-Onion Sauce

I have a 20lb case of tomatoes to preserve. What to do, what to do...
I started with the Jammy Tomato-Onion Sauce from the Kitchn blog. Very easy and quick (compared with the 8 hr roasted tomatoes cooking at the same time). It didn't specify how many tomatoes to use...I used the ones that were about to get overripe - probably 6 or so beefsteaks? Not sure what I'll use it for - pasta sauce, crostini, something like that I guess.

Preserving: Sweet Pickled Wax Beans

This recipe looked easy enough in Everyday Food. It's not online yet. Other than the pain of trimming tons of wax beans, the brine was easy and they stay for 2 months! I'll check the taste in a few days.

• 1 lb wax beans, trimmed
• 4 sprigs thyme
• 4 cups white wine vinegar
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tsp fennel seeds (I didn't have any)
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns

1. In 2 Qt-sized glass jars, arrange beans upright and place 2 sprigs thyme in each. In a small saucepan, bring vinegar, sugar, garlic, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, peppercorns, and 1 cup water to a boil over medium-high. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Let cool to room temperature.
2. Pour cooled brine over beans leaving a 1/2 space at top of each jar; seal and refrigerate at least 3 days before serving.

Preserving: Canned Plums

I did quite a bit of new food preparation today... Rainy day, playdate for the kids in the AM, then Kelly's nap and an afternoon of rushing to prevent food from going bad! I started with Canned Plums. I scored them, blanched them (with much better success than the peaches), cut them and packed them with simple syrup. I got 1 Qt jar and 1 1/2 Pint jar. A LOT of work even the skin peeled easily...they were baby plums so there were lots of them.

They look pretty though!!

I used the Time/Life Preserving book again and pretty much followed the rules for packing peaches other than the acid component (soaking them in lemon water first).

Canning Peaches

I had 20 peaches from my weekly CSA bag plus about 3 lbs of peaches left from my fruit share the week before. No way we'd get through them and my attempts at freezing raw peach pies and baking them in the winter had mediocre results (I could never reduce the liquid that was generated from the frozen peaches when it was baked resulting in a really soggy pie). I pulled out the Time Life Preserving book from the awesome Time Life Cookbook series that my Mom and Dad got me for my birthday last year. What great ideas it had in it...I love these books.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that canning peaches is easy and I ended up with 3 Qt jars full. Here's what I did...

1. Sterilize the jars in the dishwasher
2. Blanch the peaches to get the skin off easily (or so I thought...it was still a total pain in the ass). The book said to score the bottom of each peach with an X, boil for 30 seconds, put into an ice bath to stop cooking, and then peel with the edge of a paring knife. I had 2 peaches of the 30 or so that peeled in 3-4 strips...the rest had bits flying here and there and I ended up using the paring knife to basically cut the skin off.
3. Halve the peaches and pull the pits out (also a pain in the ass).
4. Soak in lemon water while waiting for canning, if necessary (I was totally disorganized so it was necessary).
5. Prepare a simple syrup - I used 2 cups sugar to 4 cups water (soak in water first, then bring to a boil to dissolve sugar). It seemed like a lot of sugar to me but it ended up divided amongst 3 Qt jars. There was another option that had 2 cups of water to 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup sugar. I'll try that next time.
6. Pack peaches cut side down in jars, but not too tight. Pour syrup over peaches. Leave about 1/2 inch headroom at top of jar. Cover with top and lid and boil, covered, for 30 minutes.