I must say that it did help some when I opened a few of last years jars of pickles. Most of mine are full strength vinegar, so they do get soft a bit faster. I like a bread and butter type slice pickle too. These are easy as I use the same salt and vinegar, but add celery seeds and mustard seeds to the jars. Last year, I also sliced lots of onions into them, but forgot to this year. I will have another big batch of cukes by Monday, so they will be B&Bs with sliced onions, a few bits of dried sweet red peppers (for color, as I always have them on hand for my pork sausages), and I use Splenda now, but sugar is the regular choice. Not quite as much sugar as a sweet mixed, but enough to take the 'edge' off the vinegar taste. I'll use my crinkle cutter too. Ever had a sweet dill? These are easy too, with the same ingredients as a regular dill, but with a bit of sugar or sweetener added. They are great with burgers or in some sandwiches.

Add to my list

3 gallons of mixed veggie pickles ( 2 to give away , that is what I get for letting people sample my pickles)

and 1 gallon of Clausen type mini dill pickles

Now on to all the maters and grapes, oh forgot about the peaches, cabbage and corn...

Stacie
who doesn't know when to say when

7 pints crushed tomatoes
plus one half-pint of just yellow ones, so pretty!

Did these the day I got back, Tuesday I guess it was. Didn't get back till late afternoon, and by the time I'd gotten settled in and had dinner with BF, it was dark (when did it stop being early summer with those late sunsets??!!!). I was sad, because I'd had a quick trip thru the garden enough to see that, indeed, I had a lot of tomatoes ripe, indeed a few overripe and fallen, and hated to wait another day to get them after waiting all summer!

So BF looked at me mischieveously and said, "I've got that new headlamp" --- indeed, he had recently bought a funky LED lamp that fits on the head. So I said, what the heck, and put it on and went out and picked the tomatoes in the dark by lamplight! The next-door neighbour (the nice one, not the one who hates us, thank goodness!) saw me --- she had come out on the deck for a smoke --- and got a good chuckle at my expense. But hey, sometimes a harvester just HAS to harvest!

I figured I had just enough for a load in my pasta pot that JUST hold pints, without having to heat up my big canner, and indeed it was just about the perfect amount. Got done canning about 12:30 p.m. and went to bed tired but satisfied.

Zabby, mad the mad midnight tomato farmer

Zabby -

Whew! Am I glad you "rescued" those poor maters. They have been worrying me since your last post, (about having to go off and leave them), so since then, I've been fretting and fretting.

Guess I can rest comfortably - now that we solved that -er jarred anyway.

Another pint of dried cherry tomatoes. Still saving the big ones for canning - almost a fridge bin full, still coming off the vines slowly. A lot of nice ancho peppers still on the way, and will make ristraus and dry when red ripe.

Bejay

Today, adding to my list is
7 pints cinnamon pickles
8 pints pickled okra
9 1/2 pints apricot jam
2 quarts dill pickles
and in the freezer
8 more quarts of okra
4 quarts of shredded zucchini for bread or cake
and another huge sack of zucchini and squash to do something with,,
I have wild grapes ready, but I am too tired to do anything with them now, maybe tomorro.

Robin, thank you for the jelly ladle, it is the best thing since the jar lifter. I have used it and used it, not only for jelly but to ladle hot liquid into jars. It is so much better than trying to pour the hot liquid from the pan.

Picked nearly a bushel each of string beans, cukes,and corn. Blanched the corn, cut off all the kernals. Blanched the string beans and they are now chilling and freezing. The cukes will be made into another batch of B&B pickles, this time WITH onions, thats for tomorrow..

I have this flat bottom stainless steel ladle that holds a pint. Its great for filling my jars quicker, nice long handle too. Would love to find another just like it. Luckily, I have special tin based solder used for soldering stainless steel, because the welds that hold the handle on, snapped, so its now soldered, so it should last a long time.

Ken, I just don't like sour pickles. I don't know how you even eat those that are straight vinegar. Adding some sugar to that much vinegar wouldn't help me at all.

I do like Linda Lou's sweet pickles, but they are 8 cups of sugar to 4 cups of vinegar, I think they are actually candied cucumbers. LOL I don't even like Bread and Butter pickles although I will eat the onions in them. I also don't eat Dilly Beans, I make them only for Ashley and I have pickled asparagus on the shelf that's been there for 2 years. No one wants that, it's too vinegary, even Dad won't eat it, it's gonna end up pig food.

I did manage to get the first day's worth of syrup on Linda Lou's sweet pickles though, and lpinkmountain came for lunch and canning. We canned 9 jars of Peach Preserves with a recipe given to me by Readinglady, another 6 jars of Peach Conserves, with figs, crystallized ginger and pecans, and 4 jars of what became my favorite, a blueberry/peach jam with Frangelico.

Annie

As mentiond in another thread, I don't make sour pickles much anymore. But my sweet mixed, dills, and B&B ones are all full strength vinegar. Ever eaten a bag of vinegar and sea salt potato chips?? Now, THATS vinegar. After a bag, your whole mouth is numb and feels like it was sand blasted clean. Once I add the cukes, peppers, onions, etc, the vinegar rate goes down due to all that water in the cukes and onions. I might add maybe 5-10% water if I want it a bit milder or less salty. My pepperoncini are just plain salt and vinegar and when youbopen a jar and eat them, you would swear they were sweetened with sugar. Everyone (over 30 people) who have tasted mine at work, have insisted that I use sugar. I have to keep telling them its just raw peppers packed in straight vingear and salt. Oh, I also do that same taste buds fooling with the vinegar, as I did with just a salt water brine. So, at a very narrow point in mixing, I find that I can get the vinegar to be masked by the right amount of salt, and this is what I go by when I know my brine is right. NOw, I cannot enjoy any sugared pickles, I use the Splenda, and its always less than a single cup, for sweeteing about the same as a 5 pound bag of sugar in a vinegar brine.

6 pints Annie's Habanero Gold - BTW, delish! Love that heat!
8 pints Mango/Raspberry Jam

I have a neighbor that has a bumper crop of Kent mangoes and she doesn't like the fruit! The tree is MINE!!! :)

More to add tonight:)

6 quart grape juice
8 1/2 pints wild grape jelly
13 pints tomato soup

And some marinara sauce cooking down slowly.

Stacie
who starts on 80 pounds of maters in the morning

Ewww, Ken, I hate those vinegar chips!

I picked corn today and have 14 pints of corn relish on my counter. That should keep the stepmother supplied for the rest of the year. I'm on day two of the syrup on Linda Lou's sweet pickles too, and I put 10 quart bags of sliced peaches in the freezer.

My tomatoes are not nearly ready, I did pick about a dozen but that's all. Too bad I have jalapenos and cilantro, but no tomatoes.

Annie

As Annie mentioned, we got together for a jam session. Thanks to the Empress of the Universe for letting me into her kitchen so I won't be totally "preserve deprived" this year. Below is a link to a thread on the Cooking Forum about our visit, with pics and recipes.

I forgot that we added ginger to the Peach Conserves. I get candied ginger from Penzeys, I love it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lpink and Annie Jammin'

Today I made:
4 half-pints of plum jam
6 half-pints grape jam that appears to be grape sauce. Curiosly, the grape I cooked to a much higher temperature than the plum. It looked like it was setting on the plate test. Now I'm not so sure. The little bit that I put in the fridge has cooled and is still pretty liquid. My sister is coming to visit tomorrow, so I will put it away and decide it's fate later.

This weekend I made 4 pints of tomato basil sauce (Small Batch Preserving), 7 pints of pickled peppers (and would you believe I have an Uncle Peter who used to work in a pickle factory! Of course he's getting pickled peppers), and 14 half pints of Annie's Salsa. Now the hard part is determining who is worthy of Annie's Salsa!

Becky, Uncle Peter's last name wasn't Piper, was it? He of the pickled pepper fame? (grin)

Here are Readinglady's peach preserves, nearly ready to go into jars.

{{gwi:901795}}

Here is a full shot of our afternoon of canning jam.

{{gwi:901797}}

I've already opened a jar of the peach preserves. Yum.

{{gwi:901799}}

Empress of the Universe
aka Annie

As to the full strength vinegar brine. Here's what I have to say.. First off, if a tightly pack a quart jar with fresh sliced onions and cucumbers, and then pour in the pickling brine (in this case the full strength vinegar with B&B spices-mustard seed, celery seed), each quart jar gets only about 3/4 to 1 cup of the brine. If you figure that only that small amount of the quart jar is full strength vinegar, what makes up the difference when its 'diluted' with all those watery vegetables?? Needless to say, if I make most any pickle types, that full strength vinegar isn't going to be 5% anymore, once the vegetables start to exude their water and juices. Even for that, my pepperoncini have very little water, so they do get the full strength vinegar, but are still very sweet and enjoyable, even if no sugar was ever used to pickle them I guess you just have to be a pickle lover to enjoy the virtues of acidic acid...

That's what makes the world work, Ken, we're all different, otherwise we'd all be canning the same things and eating the same stuff and it would be really boring.

I don't happen to like strong sour flavors, it's that "super taster" thing. It's a far stronger flavor for me than for some other people. I've never liked olives either and I know other people go crazy for them. (shrug)

Annie

Oh, and what did I put up? 6 quarts of peaches got sliced and put in the freezer. I don't pack in sugar or syrup, I just peel and slice into a bowl of water with a couple of Vitamin C capsules broken into it. The peaches stay nice and bright and I don't worry about how much sugar is in there when I'm deciding what to use them for.

Annie

OIives ugh! Worst yet is artichokes... I can't even begin to say negatives towards zuccini, its bland and tasteless, and even with a breading, fried, and sauce added, its still glop.. My sister is also a super taster, so she was the one who set me straight on the fertilizers I use in my garden. I never use Miracle Grow for anything, anymore..

Annie,

I would love the peach preserve recipe. I have some peaches wanting homes in jars.

Stacie

Add to my list 20 quarts of crushed tomatoes

Hey all --

Added my first 6 pints of Annie's salsa -- actually the recipe made 7 but one didn't seal so it went in the fridge for munching.

Also froze 4 more quarts of green / yellow beans... Made several cups worth of pesto that I froze in ice cube trays... And, drumroll please -- husband and I picked our last blueberries of the season for a total of... 169 pounds! Had to buy another freezer!

Emily

LOL, Em, I did that last year, pounds and pounds of blueberries. This year I restrained myself and only picked 25 pounds.

I'll bet I'm going to be sorry.

Stacie, here are the instructions for peach preserves as I received them from Readinglady, she's my "jam expert". I used the first method where I let the peaches sit for 12 hours and macerate in the sugar. I started them the night before and cooked them the next day when my canning "partner" showed up. The second method seemed more like a "solitary" undertaking, for some reason.

Peach preserves. (Readinglady, Harvest Forum)

I think you could do it two different ways. One is the Ferber way:
Blanch and peel your peaches. (Acidified water - she doesn't mention that but we know.) Cut into 6 wedges per half. Combine about 3 pounds peaches or a bit less in a pan with about 4 cups sugar or down to 3 1/2, depending on sweetness. Add juice of 1 lemon. Simmer so sugar dissolves, then pour into a bowl and let sit overnight (refrigerate).
I have a feeling in this case the brief, gentle pre-cooking is a better way of preserving the shape. Next day boil, stir GENTLY (spatula). Skim. Cook to set point. Etc. Etc. So no straining out the fruit in her recipe, probably because she shares your concerns.

Do you remember that Spiced Blueberry Preserve I posted last year? So good, so pretty, and lower sugar. That was Madelaine Bullwinkel's recipe. Bullwinkel's method is different but her recipe for Raspberry preserves comes as close to preserving the berry as it's possible to do.
I've had really good luck with her and even though she's more troublesome, my money's on her not Ferber for this. However, I haven't made peach preserves, so it is kind of a crap shoot, whichever you do. But she's the best at keeping the sugar down and retaining the integrity of delicate fruits. You wouldn't think so with all the cooking, but what she does works.

So for her take the same 3 pounds of peaches, prepped. Chop into large dice (1-inch). Combine with 1/3 cup water. Cover, bring to a boil. Simmer 5 minutes, partially covered. Stir, check for sticking. Continue another 15 minutes, stirring gently at 5-minute intervals (spatula).
Strain pieces out of juice. You should have about 3 cups of juice. Reduce over high heat to 2. (I like this because plain peach can be a little, um, bland.) Add 2 tablespoons lemon juice (You'll need a 3rd later). Bring to simmer.
Add 2 cups of sugar, 1/2 cup at a time. Allow mixture to return to boil before adding more sugar. Continue cooking syrup to jell point. Pour jelly over peach pieces. Allow to steep 15 minutes. Return preserves to the boil in a clean pan. Add 1 more tablespoon of lemon juice. Bring preserves to a boil. Add 1/3 final cup of sugar and cook briefly until jell point is restored. Do the usual with BWB, etc.

I think I'm still going to try that second method, where you strain the pieces of fruit and thicken the syrup, then add the fruit back in. I think that would retain the integrity of the fruit chunks without overcooking them.

Annie

Yep, differences do make the world, Ken!

Living in Toronto's Greek neighbourhood I learned to love dozens of kinds of olives, each with its own special features.

And artichokes --- heaven! Have been my fave food since I was five years old (though at that point in my life I think I was most interested in them as an excuse to scoop quantities of butter & lemon sauce into my mouth...) ;-)

Prob. my biggest grumble about my northness, other than the marginality of apricots, is the iffiness of growing artichokes here. (You can do it, now that there are faster-growing varieties that produce some fruit in one long season, and I'll try it some day for fun, but it is really pushing the limits, a lot of work & worry for a very small amount of artichokes IF you are lucky....)

Zabby, who actually likes to eat ALMOST anything, with the exception of mushrooms --- and wouldn't you know it, there is a huge mushroom farm right here in my region; at least they sell good compost for cheap, I can use that!

Artichoke to me tastes like eating grass. I do tolerate some olives and have even made breads with various varieties, but they aren't my favorites. Apricots of the Manchurian type can survive in Z5. My 4 fruit (grafted dwarf tree) had just a single one this year, and two kinds of plums and the peaches.

Yes, that spent mushroom compost is great for gardens.Mushrooms are a great food to pickle too. I grew some a few years ago, but figured it was still cheaper to buy them. For a pickled mushroom, I use whole white button types, and rinse off any dirt first. Then they get put in the microwave so they cook down. All the liquid is drained off and saved for another dish. They cant get overcooked, so you could leave them in the microwave for quite a while. After they get drained of juice, I make a batch of pickling brine, with some garlic and dill added. The musrooms are packed and the jars are filled. Processing takes about 10 minutes. They keep for years that way and do not break down like cucumbers or other pickled vegetables.

> Apricots of the Manchurian type can survive in Z5. My 4 fruit (grafted dwarf tree) had just a single one this year

That's exactly what I mean by "marginal."

Eeeew, pickled mushrooms!!!! C'mon, it's not even a food, it's a fungus! ;-)

Zabby

This weekend:

20 half-pints of low-sugar nectarine jam from Red Gold and Fantasia nectarines--one batch had a little fresh ginger added.

The jam is a gorgeous yet slightly scary deep red with gold flecks. I love the low-sugar versions of jams made with Pomona's pectin--the taste of the fruit really shines through. Plus, my DH and I are both supertasters for sugar, so a little goes a long way for us. Neither can stand sweet pickles and LOVE sour stuff. Apparently, our 14-month-old got it, too. Nothing he loves better than a pickled pepper.

Also:
5 1/2 quarts of crushed tomatoes
5 quarts of the roasted tomato garlic soup (frozen)

Leigh

I just took 8 more pints of Linda Lou's sweet pickle chunks out of the canner and every one sealed!! Hooray. It's been a bad year for cukes, so I probably won't get to can many more. Too bad about that half jar on the counter, I just had to cover them with brine and put them in the refrigerator for immediate consumption. Darn. :-)

Annie

Today,

24 pints of Annie's salsa, The only problem being that I added a bit too many hot peppers to the mix. Boy is it spicy, just enough to make your mouth burn a little bit. I think after the last few days of 24 pints of salsa, 20 quarts of crushed tomatoes, 13 pints of tomato soup, 8 quarts of marinara sauce, and 50 fruit flies invading my kitchen, I just might be done with maters, now the only problem is if I run into the special of 25 pounds of tomatoes for 8 dollars.

Stacie who is now officially out of pint jars

Wow,

I wanted to see just how much stuff I have canned so far this year. I have gone through all teh 2006 posts and so far I have come up with....... drum roll please......320 jars of stuff. I have run out of pints, and all those from friends and neighbors, And I just can't stop.

Stacie

Whoa, Stacie! Remember to save some time to EAT some of that harvest....

Meanwhile, tonight I put into my lovely new freezer eight (yes, a whole 8, LOL) containers of spaghetti sauce made with a mix of heirloom tomatoes. Four were 24-ounce and four were 12-ounce, two of each with turkey sausage and two each with extra veggies.

Didn't look like much for all the effort --- took me about two hours, not counting harvesting the tomatoes before supper. And I haven't even cleaned the kitchen up yet. But it'll be nice in the dead of winter to have some sauce made within a few hours of picking the toms....

Zabby

Ahh but a very good fungus, with B vitamins too. Fat free, sugar free, and still good for you. Its not bread mold, but a cultured vegetable, that just happens to love a lot of manure as a soil medium. No soup for you.. No mushroom soup for you...

Ken, LOL!

You are welcome to my serving of mushroom soup. I'll take all your artichokes, please!

Zabby

Today,

I got 13 quart of grape juice canned, 7 quart of cinamon apple rings, and 3 apple crisps ( one for me, one for neighbor and one for my folks)

I get to go and substitute teach tomorrow then football scrimage in the evening. We have a shower on Saturday then going to the in laws ( will get some more apples:))

But I hate being gone and not able to do any canning

Stacie

7 1/2 pints of Annies Salsa. I'm going to have to find a guinea pig to try it since I don't eat salsa and DH is in Amsterdam until Sept 2nd. I really want to see if I did a good job!

Come to Annapolis...I'll test it for you!

This am I finally used the pressure canner to do 4 pints of tomato sauce. I can see it would take a lot of tomatoes to can much of that.

Most of the refrigerator bin full of tomatoes only made 3-half pints and one quarter pint of pizza sauce - cooked down until very thick.

Finally opened the bee hive today - snatched a frame of honey - only one sided this time. I hate to take so much at one time, especially now that the main honey season is over. No stings this time, so maybe it pays not to disturb them when there is a big honey flow. They get a lot madder then!!

Almost September - so can look forward to the usual mountain trip to - hopefully - get some apples, pears and peaches - if the heat didn't wipe out their crop. The gas shortage thing has me a bit worried - wondering if they will be open during the week or only week-ends. Folks around here are taking the high gas prices pretty seriously. Not easy, cuz everything is so spread out in Ca., and not very good public transportation here.

Outside of the peppers and a few zukes, raspberries, my garden is just about "kaput." Have some limes getting yellow, so may try some of the more "exotic" jellies, not sure if my family will like them tho -

Bejay

Here it's still peach season, so I made Dad 6 pints of peach syrup for his pancakes. I used Linda Lou's fruit syrup recipe, but used the SureJell for no sugar jam and after the syrup boiled I added Equal to taste, put into jars and into the BWB. We'll see how it is...

Tomorrow I'd like to start on some catsup.

Annie

We made banana pepper relish with a recipe I got from one of the forums here. It is excellent! We made 2 batches, one with vidalia onions and the other with red onion. Both are very good!

these are aproximate values because i have things stacked to high,i could not get to them to count them all. 90% of what i can, my husband and i grow. the rest is given to me. this year all i had to buy was red plums,pinto beans and onions. i will probably buy some pears also. even my chicken soup is from our back yard flock.

35 pints zuchini relish
12 half pints zucchini relish
2 quarts zucchini relish
7 pints onion relish
6 pints ketchup
8 pints chili sauce
50 quarts green beans
40 quarts tomatoes
25 quarts tomato juice
4 quarts dill pickles
4 pints dill pickles
6 pints bread and butter pickles
1 gallon bread and butter refridgerator pickles
1 gallon dill refridgerator pickles
5 pint and a halfs strawberry-rhubarb jam
7 pints strawbery jam
8 half pints black berry jam
10 quarts of pumpkim butter- frozen in pint jars
1 quart dried prunes
3 quarts of plum/apple pulp- turned into fruit roll ups
23 pints salsa
8 pints red plum jam
4 bushels of corn-frozen
8 pints apple butter
4 frozen apple pies-great for christmas time
2 quarts ground beef sloppy joe
6 pints ground beef sloppy joe
4 qyarts chicken soup

8 pints pinto beans and 2 quarts of pinto beans- i had canned a lot more than this but one by one the lids kept popping up, not sure what i did wrong?

as i type i have a crock pot full of apple butter and i plan to (time permitting) buy some pears and make pear something. i want to can some more soups and i have to can my late green beans when they are done in a week or two.

i would love to can some tomato sauce and dry some tomatoes, but i am not sure i will have time because i work full time and have two kids in football.

happy harvesting to everyone!!!

amanda

Amanda, hats off to you!

Zabby,
thinking it'll be a big accomplishment if she gets a few quarts of peaches into the freezer tomorrow for winter smoothie breakfasts ;-)

Another dozen quarts of dill pickles, this time the Polish type. also blanched about 50 ears of corn and cut the kernals off for the freezer. Some are now in a big cookie sheet in the freezer, so they won't form big clumps when bagged. This new corn zipper took a little time to get used to, but its now very easy to strip rows of kernals off each cob about two at a time. I tried using the circular one with side handles, but it seemed to bind and dig into the cobs, then I tried the long yellow mandoline style with a curved blade and that was fairly easy to use, but should have beebn designed to be more curved as it nicks several rows of kernals which makes for a bit more bits and pieces. The zipper is all stainless and does a neat job of removing the rows two at a time. It takes less than 20 seconds to cut off all the kernals off a cob.

Here my lastest job was 19 pints of salsa. One didn't seal, so we're going to have to eat it, darn it anyway. (grin)

I still haven't made that catsup either, but I did go out and spend the day wandering about the National Forest, picking blackberries. Dad wants some sugar-free jelly, so I spent a couple of hours picking berries to make something I won't eat. LOL

I'm going to pick more next weekend, there were still lots of unripe ones, so I'll get MY batch of jam next week. I won't share that with Dad because it'll have sugar and because it'll have seeds. That keeps it safe for me.

Annie

Two three-quart baskets of peaches peeled & sliced into the freezer.

They aren't exactly the most beautiful slices in the world --- sometimes I think "freestone" is more wishful thinkig than descriptive term! But since I'll mostly use them in cooked desserts or in smoothies, I don't care.

I packed most of them into those wee little half-sized Ziploc baggies, two peaches' worth per baggie (just enough for a smoothie breakfast), till I ran out and did two full-sized baggies, one with four peaches' worth and one with five. In the morning when they're solid, I'll pack the little baggies all into a couple of sturdier Ziplock freezer bags.

Have I mentioned how much I love Ziplock bags???

Zabby the Zany Ziplocker

Amanda, I am truly in awe. Think my jaw hit the floor when I saw your list!

As for me, added 12 more pints of Katie's Peach Salsa and 8 more pints of Annie's Salsa last night... Very frustrating on the Annie's salsa -- I made a double batch and was canning in the 24 ounce jars when I discovered that my dial gauge pressure canner's dial was broken! Argh. Had to turn off the canner, let it depressure, transfer the boiling hot salsa into pint jars, and re-process in my weighted gauge!

Emily

Annie's salsa --- m y first batch of the season!

Got 14 half-pints plus most of another!

BF just pretty much sat and drooled the whole time, waiting for it to be ready. He's never forgiven me for giving away our last jar last month, before the tomatoes were ripe to make more with.

I picked two MONSTER tomatoes today --- about 1 pound, 11 ounces each, biggest I've ever grown. I didn't have too many others that were ripe, and was a bit worried I might not be able to get 8 cups of tomatoes for the salsa. But when I'd peeled & cored & chopped the two monsters, it made six cups just from the two of them! Three more medium Big Beefs and I had what I needed...

Zabby

today i added to my stash

10 quarts blue lake beans
7 quarts white half runner beans
7 quarts tomato soup
4 pints dilly beans- i have never tried these before
4 quarts of spiced pear halves
30 green peppers frozen in strips

i am done with tomatoes now. i will have kentucky pole beans left to can if they make before the first frost. i may make another batch of apple butter later on if i can find some more frebies and i will still have some green peppers to freeze, but other than that i am wore out and glad to be done this year.

my house is in serious need of a good cleaning and my flower beds need some attention. so i will be moving on to fall cleaning very soon.

amanda

When will I be done....

Add to my list 12 jars of cornichon pickles
7 quart of garlic dill pickles
9 pint of bruschetta spread

Today more pickles, apples and pears.

Stacie

Yesterday we put up 18 pints of habanero hot sauce. Had so many habanero peppers that I didnt know what to do with them. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with the rest of them along with all my cuban peppers! We only put in 2 plants of each and they have produced so many peppers this year. I have never seen anything like it! I guess it was the heat spell we had. I know we have dried quiet a bit also. Put those in some nice decorative pint jars we had to give away at the holidays. The jalepenos and chili peppers are coming in strong too. Looks like I better do some recipe serches! lol

Took me over 5 minutes to get this thread. It is about ready to fall off. Last year, 100 posts was the limit. . I have slow service here. Will someone start a new thread?

Shirley, I think the limit is now 150, but you are right, it's taking a long time to load.

I'll start "What have you put up in 2006, Part 2".

Annie