Game bird,

You must have had tons of watermelons to end up with that much juice! And, it sure will be a lot of jars and lids.

Dawn

Tons of watermelons? That was only two! I have 20 or so still out in the field. Is it any good to try to boil the juice down and make a concentrate out of it?

As it turns out, the local Wal-Mart didn't have enough liquid pectin to make the recipe. Is there any way to use the non-liquid form in this recipe?

Give me a few days and I'll post my recipe for watermelon pudding. It's kind of silly, but I use toasted fennel seeds to simulate watermelon seeds. makes a great presentation with whipped cream and sprinkled with poppy seeds (is that gilding the lily?) A great way to use fresh, ripe watermelon. Isn't all the talk of food preservation and harvest recipe stuff great? Honestly, this is why I garden.....thanks to all of you.

Dale

Gamebird, I've never tried to make it without liquid pectin, so hold on and I'll check this year's release of the Ball's Blue Book and see what they say about liquid pectin......

And the Ball's Blue Book says you cannot substitute one form of pectin for another. I didn't think you could, but I wanted to check because every time a new book comes out, something in the USDA canning guidelines has changed (which is why they update the book).

If I had that many watermelons ready at one time, I'd eat them fresh for as long as we could stand them and freeze the rest. I've stopped planting too many watermelons at one time because we have a small family and couldn't eat them up fast enough even after I gave a bunch away. It is unfortunate that they don't keep longer than they do.

I don't see why you couldn't put your 'extra' watermelon juice in ziplock bags and freeze it (leaving some headspace for expansion) for now, and take it out whenever you want and make more jelly....and don't forget that somebody suggested watermelon popsicles. They would be a great treat on a warm autumn afternoon. I bought popsicle molds at Wal-Mart a few years back and use them to make all kinds of popsicles, including sometimes making Gatorade popsicles for the firefighters.

Dale, I'm looking forward to seeing that recipe and trying it. I bet it does make a wonderful presentation.

Preserving the harvest and preparing meals with it, both now and later, is one of the reasons I think raising veggies is so much fun. The 'food talk' is fun, and if you think we are talking about it a lot here, go over to the "Harvest" forum here at GW and all the food preservation that is going on over there will knock your socks off.

You haven't lived until you've had "Annie's Salsa" and the "Habanero Gold" jelly.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Harvest Forum

I divided the recipe into two 6 cup lots and used powder pectin for the other batch. I did not like the recipe posted here with vinegar in it. The vinegar was too strong!

The other recipe I liked a great deal. It was:

6 cups watermelon juice
11 cups sugar
3.5 oz powdered pectin

- Mix juice and pectin
- Bring to a rolling boil.
- Add sugar.
- Boil for one minute.
- Remove from heat and pour into prepared jars.
- Process in boiling water for 10 minutes.

It tasted like watermelon Jolly Rancher!

I'll be making more of that recipe and next time I'll probably include some mint or more lemon balm.

Any suggestions on what the vinegar jelly can be used for? My husband suggested coyote food. ;) At this point I'll let it set up for a day or two and then take some to my mother and we'll taste test it. Maybe she'll have an idea for it.

Ah, I have discovered why the first jelly turned out badly. When I scaled up the recipe, I scaled up the vinegar x6 and everything else x3. x3 was appropriate. x6 was not. Thus I have severely vinegar-flavored jelly. :( Compost pile material, coyote food, whatever. Mistake of me!

Well, at least you can feed the compost pile.....or the coyotes! I have found that coyotes will eat almost anything. We have tons of native persimmons here and even the ripe fruit are very astringent and not at all edible until frost has blackened them and sweetened them up. The coyotes, though, eat them while they still are terribly green. That alone proves to me that coyotes don't have taste buds like ours.

Gamebird
I'm so sorry your recipe didn't work out this time. Who among us hasn't had that experience? I know I sure have. We win some, and loose some but we learn by doing.

Dawn
I've made Annie's Salsa. Great recipe. Though like most of us, we dabble with recipes and omit what we don't like. In my case it's cilantro. I don't know why but I can't stand the stuff. To each his own I guess. Anyways, "to whom it may concern"...I roasted the tomatos rather than just peeling first,etc, because I didn't want a juicy, soupy base, nor did I want to add tomato sauce or paste, but wanted every ingredient to come from my own garden. What this accomplished was a very THICK salsa. However, I must say that the roasting also tended to sweeten the tomatos, so that no added sugar was needed. I also eliminated the green pepper. To me, adding green pepper was not necessary, and not a true salsa. But that's just me, and "food" for thought for others who may want to try the recipe.
I sure like the Harvest Forum and think most anyone, including self here can learn from gals, (and sometimes guys)like Dale, new, different or better ways of doing things, and in the process find great recipes for preserving our precious garden bounty.

Barbara

Barbara, I'm with you on the cilantro. I think it is the perfect way to ruin good Mexican food. I hate both the taste and the smell. I do like green peppers in salsa tho, but like them better after they have ripened and turned color. I have a lot of green ones in my garden right now that I am trying not to pick until they turn. I have picked a few because I have had some that grew where they didn't have enough leaf coverage and had a sunscald spot. The pepper was fine for cooking. I love growing peppers. They are probably my favorite thing to grow.

I have had to learn to like cilantro because Tim loves it and puts much, much, much more of it in salsas and pico de gallos that he makes than the recipes state. I have to remind him "Not too much cilantro....." and he says "OK, dear." and puts too much in anyway.

Barbara, I like Annie's salsa made just as the recipe states, but I am not a picky salsa eater and will eat and enjoy just about any one that I taste. We do have to make two kinds of salsa here at our house, a really hot one for Tim and our DIL, and a mild one for me and for our son. I am making jalapeno jelly for all of us, and the habanero stuff for our two who think 'the hotter the better'. I've just started harvesting habaneros and we are going to have dozens and dozens, so Tim is in hog heaven. This has been the best hot pepper year ever.

Carol, My peppers are sunscalding too. In our case, lately we're getting a lot of wind out of the east and it is blowing the plants all over the place. I've been trying to rescue them, cut off the scalded part and use the rest. I was hoping to let them mostly get to their ripe colors of red, yellow and orange, but am having to harvest some green to save them.

Peppers are my second favorite thing to grow after tomatoes. And, in a lot of ways, they tend to be easier than tomatoes because they don't get nearly as many foliage diseases. I especially love growing hot peppers because they are so versatile and the heat doesn't slow their production down like it does with sweet peppers. I am toying with the idea of making one corner of the new garden a dedicated pepper area and then putting up a shade structure over them....maybe just wooden posts with lattice on top.

I planted three birdpepper plants this year....what was I thinking? We are going to have enough of those tiny peppers to last 100 years!

I grow lots of ornamental peppers too. I even cut back on how many ornamental ones I planted this year because I feared the drought would continue, but I still have 15 or 20 of them....and some of those volunteered on their own. My current faves are black pearl and purple splash.

Dawn

The Mexican food I was raised on in NM used little if any cilantro. So I guess I don't have the taste for it. There is a place in Guymon where the Mexican food is good but in some of their dishes they use too much for me. Last night way too much in their burritos. I green chili and jalapenos along with those that have changed colors. Think it adds to the flavor to mix them. Just my preference. I picked a few tomatillos this morning but not enough tomatoes to make any salsa or hot sauce. May try freezing them till I have enough. I've had a little sunburn but not much. The wind has been a problem though. Jay

Gamebird,
What type or types of watermelon do you have and what do you like or dislike about them. Trying to figure out what type I'm going to plant next year. I need something fairly compact.

I think cilantro tastes like dirty socks. Blech. :)

I'm jealous of all of your veggies, salsas and canning. I sort of wish I grew veggies instead of flowers. But there's only one to eat them! and veggies take a lot more supervision than flowers.

Enjoy!

Lisa