wellllllll, I have plans to make dill relish - hope to get cukes today - if that sounds good I'm in - as long as my relish turns out! LOL

Let me know if you like dill relish and I'll let you know if it's edible.

Also doing Chase's dills.

Stacy, sounds like a plan. Let me know when your relish is done and we can exchange savory for sweet.

I haven't started canning here yet either, but I'll be doing dilled beans, pickled beets, more salsa, sauerkraut....

anything sound good?

Annie

Annie

DH LOVES beets and the beans and salsa sound good too. Unfortunately saurkraut leaves me...well I'll be polite and say we don't get on well LOL

I'm going to check exactly what I have and I'll list it here as soon as possible. I'm afraid once I go down to the nice cool basement I won't resurface for a while :)

I might be. Other than jam I put up salsa, black eye peas, squash relish, apricot jalepeno jelly and anything else I can get my hands on.

It has been so hot that our garden is not doing well. The cucumbers and squash are doing good, but the tomatoes are scorching on the plant and I have not had one pepper yet. I usually have peppers galore. The green beans burned up and I think the okra is on it's way too. I just hope the black eye peas make it.

The only thing I have put up so far is 40 quarts and 40 pints of cream style corn and I froze it.

Sadly, I have nothing to harvest this year. Our plum tree made plums for two weeks only, and we didn't get more than two dozen plums. We have a weak looking Fuji apple tree, and I'm not expecting much from that. The peach tree we have is ornamental only, and so it makes inedible fruit. What were they thinking when they put these trees in? Oh, and the orange trees they planted were destroyed by their dogs. I'm planning on taking out all the existing trees and putting in sensible trees, like Meyer Lemon, lime, and some kind of good orange tree. I probably won't be planting figs again soon, as they were more than I could handle, but I might put in a passion vine to get passion fruit. At least it makes beautiful flowers, but I also like the passion fruit juice that I was able to collect from my previous vines. I probably won't plant another mango tree, as they take up quite a bit of space.

I have a much smaller back yard here than I did in Venice, since the house was expanded into the back to add the master suite, dining room, and den. I hope I'll have something next year.

Lars

Lars - if you ever get that passion fruit vine going I am going to beg you to send me some ripe fruit. I grew up in Africa and we had them growing all over the house walls. Mom used to say "no more food till dinner time" and we'd sneak out and stuff ourselves with granadillas.

Trixie, all sounds delish!! Let me know what you guys have extra of and we can swap and share so we all have a good variety.

I have lots of 8oz jars of peach-ginger chutney, a couple of raspberry jam, some pear jam but this one didn't gel well and has a very delicate flavor, and some orange-peach marmalade.

welllll. I did my relish and we tasted some last night and it seemed very salty. I'm sorry! (Will kind of puckered up and politely said "oh, it's good - different - but good!") then I tasted - blech. and I love salt.

I may put my canning supplies in a garage sale.

No, no, no, Stacy, don't give up. Find a tried and true recipe from someone and try again. I've never made dill relish, but I make Grandma's sweet relish every year, the family would rebel if they had to buy sweet relish, LOL.

I find a lot of recipes to be very vinegar-y or very salty, and so I've learned to look at amounts and decide whether I want to make that recipe or whether I can safely cut the amount of whatever ingredient that seems over the top.

So, what do you want to make next?

Annie

Hey Stacy, don't give up. Mark the recipe and try it again, with less salt. Salt doesn't affect the acidity so your recipe should be good with less.

When canning and jam making were still new to me I made a jam that looked perfect. When it set up it was ROCK SOLID, you couldn't even get a spoon in there. Guess I went past the gel stage and onto the toffee one :) I still don't always get it right hence my pear jam which never did set up although it is yum on toast and even better over vanilla or pear ice cream

Annie, care to share Grandma's recipe. If not I understand. Some recipes are family treasures

Loves2cook, I've made a couple of jars of pear taffy myself. (grin) It happens. The stuff that doesn't set up I also use as sauce, as syrup on pancakes or Ashley just dunks her toast into a puddle of it on her plate, she says she gets jam on every bite that way.

The sweet relish recipe? I'm happy to share. I spent over a decade trying to recreate Grandma's relish after she passed away. I never got it right. One day when I was visiting my Aunt Lulabelle, she was canning relish. I tasted and it was amazingly like Grandma's. She's my Dad's sister and my Grandma was my maternal Grandmother. Didn't stop her from giving Aunt Lulabelle that recipe at least 20 years before, LOL, and so it came back to me, via my Dad's side of the family.

CUCUMBER RELISH (GRANDMAÂS RECIPE)

4 cups ground cucumbers
4 large onions, ground up
4 green peppers, ground up
1 or 2 red peppers, ground up
1 tbls. Salt
4 tsp celery seed
2 tsp. Turmeric
½ tsp. Pepper
4 cups vinegar
4 cups sugar

Combine veggies and salt and let stand for 2 hours. Drain well, add rest of ingredients and cook slowly for 1 hour. Pack hot into hot jars and process in boiling water bath 15 minutes for pints.

Makes 6 Â 8 pints

I don't have any "secret" recipes, I'm always happy to share. If any were to make me famous, it would have been Annie's Salsa, but that's already everywhere, too late to keep it secret. (grin)

Annie

Annie, what a great story!! Hope you wrote it on the card so Ashley and her grandchildren etc keep the story alive. That what I LOVE about handwritten recipes vs keeping everything on the PC and one of the reasons I love my recipe Box (and my MacGourmet).

How do you grind your veggies? Food Processor, blender, knife or meat grinder?

Also how much pepper?

My family loves the junk relish from Sam's club. Heinz I think it is. But I saw cukes and peppers at the farmer's market and would love to try this. Maybe I shouldn't though. What if they LIKE it. I'll be making jars and jars of the stuff every summer. But it will become a tradition. OK, I think I'll do it

As for the Annie's Salsa, can I swap for some so I can have something to comapare my rendition of your recipe against?

How much black pepper? 1/2 tsp. How much red pepper? I use two because the color is prettier, LOL. Oh, and I use the big cucumbers, the ones that "got away from me" and are big and seedy, because they all get ground up anyway.

I originally ran the vegetables through my old metal meatgrinder that hooks to the table, then I started putting them through the salad shooter with the grating blade. I didn't can any last year, so this year I'm going to try the food processor, with the grating blade. I don't like it as much all ground up fine as I do grated, it stays on a burger better!

I'd be glad to swap anything you like for some of my "original" salsa, as soon as I make some. My tomatoes are still hard and green. Sigh.

Annie