Jardinière

I prefer to get the canning out of the way early in the day. The afternoons are bad enough without adding to the misery with a hot stove and pots of boiling water.

I am not sure if this jardinière will taste like store-bought, but sifting through recipes and variations was a challenge. I made my own mix of vegetables and used the jardinière pickling brine recipe from the Ball book. We shall see how this batch tastes and I can tweak it from there.

It certainly is colorful!

This mix contains cauliflower—three colors, from the Amish store—carrots, zucchini, celery, garlic, and pepperoncini. To that, I added pearl onions and pickling spices.

What a surprise, though, when I took the first batch out of the canner and discovered that the purple cauliflower turns everything else purple!

This is so pretty in the jars, but next time, I might stick to plain white cauliflower.

I ended up with 18 pints—plenty for this year. I don’t need to can for an army.

Next up on the schedule is apple pie filling. I should have my first ripe tomato this week, too.

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The husband and I went out to dinner last night. We had been given gift cards to Mercantile Steak and tried it for our anniversary. We both liked it so we went back again last night. They did not have a fish special, unfortunately—I prefer seafood to steak—but I had a burger and it hit the spot.

A storm passed over and it rained for a few minutes while we were eating. After dinner, we went to Home Depot. The husband is making some mods to the golf cart and needed a trailer hitch. Yesterday, while I was canning, he changed the tires and put a couple of ATV tires with deep treads on it. I told him that if he improves the golf cart too much, I’m going to have to re-upholster the seat cushion.

This is the husband in home improvement stores:

My calendar is clear for the week, but things start to ramp up this month. Fall will be busy. I’ll spend the next few days prepping projects and working on that Log Cabin quilt.