Wednesday, August 10, 2011

MORE Canning and Preserving with Honey Part 2


I have spent the last couple of weeks working furiously to get my garden into jars. "Garden in a jar" would make a catchy name for a vegetable company, wouldn't it? With sweat dripping off my forehead in gallons, and a near heat stroke (complete with headache and nausea), I finally realized my dream of a packed pantry. 

I have also been receiving various canning recipes from gals who use honey in their recipes, so I want to reprint at least one of those here.

First, I want to give you my corn relish recipe for canning.  I was persuaded this year by a friend, who is a horticulturist at a university near-by, to try something called "kohlrabi". I can't really describe to you what this thing looks like, but it is a big green ball with numerous appendages coming out of it and tastes like cabbage/radish.  But what to do with it?  I finally decided to shred it and add it to my corn relish. I also completely substituted out the sugar in place of honey, and used up the rest of my corn, green peppers and tomatoes.

Corn Relish Canning Recipe (I remember this by adding 2 cups this, 2 cups that..)
2 c corn
2 c chopped onion
2 c chopped tomatoes
2 c cucumbers
as much kohlrabi as you can stand
1 lg green pepper
1 c honey
1  c cider vinegar
1.5 t celery seed
1.5 t mustard seed
1 t salt
1/2 t ground tumeric

Combine, bring to boil, cook 20 -30 minutes.  Put into hot, sterilized jars and follow manufacturer's instructions for canning. 

Aunt Mary's Beets
This recipe was given to me by a customer named Anita whom we met in one of our classes back in March, who is sharing her Aunt Mary Hawk's recipe here, and from Anita's description, she sounded like a wonderful lady.

2 cups white vinegar
2 cups honey
2 cups water
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp allspice

Boil beets (leave 1 inch of tops and root intact) for 20 minutes in water(fork tender but not mushy), plunge in cold water and slip the skins and trim root and tops. Pack in sterilized pint jars, leaving smaller beets whole, chunking or slicing larger ones. Bring above ingredients to a rolling boil and pour over beets, filling jars, but leaving 1/4 inch head space. Place lids on top and tighten rings. These will actually seal without water bath process, or you can water bath process for 10 minutes if desired.

How many beets, you say? Well, Aunt Mary sounds a lot like me, and that is when you go out to your garden and bring in the beets, you don't have any idea what you are going to end up with.  So bring them in--however many you have--prepare them as above, putting them in jars and pour the juice over.  When you run out of the prepared juice, you just make more until you have covered all your beets. That's farm cooking. You don't know what you're starting with or what you'll end up with, but it's usually fantastic. 





1 comment:

Unknown said...

That sounds like a very interesting recipe! I'm co-hosting Canning Week on my blog and invite you to come by and link up your recipe! We're having a recipe contest and canning related giveaways all week. I hope you stop by!
Jen @ Mess Hall to Bistro
http://messhalltobistro.blogspot.com/2011/08/canning-week-linky.html