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| From El Huerto |
I have already dedicated two posts this year to my adventures in gardening. This summer, I fell in love with what I like to call my “huerto” (Spanish for Garden). It always makes me happy to track the report of my plants when I wake up in the morning. I find myself talking to the plants them as I water them and feeling sad when they are abused by the DC sun. Among my babies, there is small jalapeño plant I bought in June at the Home Depot at Rhode Island Ave which gave me plenty of little green and red peppers. With all too many of them, I decided to try my hand at preserving.
I found beautiful Ball quilted jars at Wegmans which I intended to use for entertaining. I thought it would be nice to use them for their actual purpose. I found a recipe at the Ball website for the jelly. It was pretty simple and omitted the green food coloring. I like my food to look natural. I picked the jalapenos from the plant and proceeded to cut them in my kitchen when I made a BIG mistake: I rubbed my eye with my bare hands!!! Thanks to the internet, I found a great solution to the problem: I made an eye wash with a shot glass and milk. It really calmed the inflammation. Note to self: wear gloves as the instructions state!
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| Pretty Ball Jars |
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| The last step, processing the canned contents in boiling water |
I did not have all the canning equipment of the pros but I managed to follow the instructions and effectively sterilize the jars in my Le Creuset without getting burned. Once the content was set on the jars, I placed them in the kitchen until fully cooled. A few hours later, I started hearing popping sounds, indicating the jars sealed. The proof came the next day, when I got to try my jelly. I was very proud of myself! It had the right balance of sweet and spicy. I later served it at a party with homemade cornbread bites and gave extra jars as gifts. Overall, I thought the process was going to be more complicated than I thought, happy that it turned out well. Looking forward to doing more preserving, especially with the fall and winter fruits.
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| Ready to be served! |
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