Award Winning Pickled Garlic

My husband has a cousin who makes the most amazing Bloody Mary you have ever tasted. At any family gathering he is dragooned almost immediately into making a batch for the family. I thought it would be fun to make different pickled things to bring to our family reunion this summer. So, with that in mind, I made pickled garlic this weekend.  This was a great project for a number of reasons: not much is growing here in Wisconsin yet so this was something to do until things warm up and fruits and veggies become ready to pick, it was freakishly easy, and it was a great project to do with my daughter.  This recipe came from Grow A Greener World.
First the cast of characters:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups white wine vinegar
• 3/4 cup distilled water 
• 1 tbsp. pickling salt (or kosher salt)
• 1 lbs. garlic cloves, peeled
• 4 bay leaves
• 4 sprigs of fresh rosemary (my store did not have fresh rosemary so I omitted it. Bummer.)
• 4 sprigs of fresh thyme 
• 4 tsp. brown or yellow mustard seeds (divided)
• 4 pinches crushed red pepper flakes (divided)
• 1 tsp. whole black peppercorns (divided)
• 4 lemon slices

Directions:

1. Get your water bath canner ready and put 4 half-pint jars in there to warm up.
2. In a small non-reactive pot combine the vinegar, water and salt and bring to a simmer.
3. Into each of the jars place a thyme spring , a bay leaf, 1 tsp mustard seed, a pinch of pepper flakes, and 1/4 tsp of peppercorns. (This is a great step for kids to do.  I put each jar's spices into a little baby food container so that she could add them to the jars.)
   
4. Fill up the jars with garlic and add brine leaving 1/2" of head space.  Make sure all the cloves are covered with the liquid.
   
5. Top each jar with a lemon slice. Dislodge any air bubbles and add more brine if needed.
   
6. Process in a hot water bath for 15 minutes.  These are shelf stable for up to one year.
   

So that's it.  As simple as it gets!  I'll let you know in a couple of weeks how they turned out!

Mango Lemon Jelly

I started this blog completely on a whim over my lunch hour yesterday at work.  That said, there are some projects that predate the blog and this is one of them:

My local store had Mango Lemonade on sale last week and I got the idea to turn it into jelly.  After consulting a friend and doing some online research I figured the recipe would be something along the lines of 4 cups of juice + 1 pkg of pectin + 4 cups of sugar.  I used a pretty standard method:  mixed the juice and pectin, brought it to a boil, added the sugar and boiled for one minute, put it into jars and processed for 10 minutes.
The jars came out of the water sparkling like jewels except for one that apparently had it's ring screwed on wrong and leaked lemony syrup all over the place. Oops.  That was my omen of bad things to come and sure enough, the jelly didn't gel.  Grrr.
A little more research online and I tried fixing it.  I dumped all the jars back into a pot and threw in a little pectin.  I brought it to a boil and added a little more sugar.  More boiling, jars, processing. This time...it gelled!  Woo hoo!
This jelly is delicious and summery.  It's got a nice sharp lemon bite on the finish.  My plan was to pick up some bagels and cream cheese while I was grocery shopping today so that I could take a beauty shot of this jelly adorning a schmeared bagel but I forgot to buy both of those items while I was out. Yeah...I'm gonna be good at this blogging thing.

I'm starting this blog as a way to track my experiments in canning and preserving.  When my husband's grandmother passed away I received her water bath canner.  At the time I didn't know what it was and thought it was just a really gigantic soup pot but probably one that I would never use.  It was while I was reading a blog post from a friend of mine about making apple butter that a light bulb went off in my head sending me down to the far corner of my basement to retrieve the canner.
Now a few years and a couple of batches of apple butter down the road, I am beginning to take the time to learn how to can in earnest.  I've been trolling Pinterest for recipes, reading all kinds of blogs, and buying cookbooks on the topic. It was probably unnecessary to buy the cookbooks - everything I could need is online, but truth be told I have an addiction.
So come along with me on this little culinary adventure. I promise to post the failures as well as the successes, and I'm sure there will be plenty of failures. Who knows? There may even be a jar of something yummy in it for you...but only if you promise to return the jar!