peppers | nate elston

Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016

Let’s pretend that blogging has a fiscal year that floats from the calendar year, that will make me feel better about this post. I was looking back at 2015 and realized that I manged three shameful posts the whole year, I apologize. In my mind I am much more active in the blogging space, telling you all about the changes that are happening around here, what we are eating and how we making it. But reality is I suck at this whole blogging bit lately. 20151207_212016

So let me give you a little catch up, the blog has been devoid of tasty recipes as of late – with good reason we have been eating lots of the same things, lot’s of venison and vegetables from our garden. This past year we canned up a lot of food from our garden in all sorts of fun arrangements, we are eating it this winter and hopefully I will tell you about some of those, but in the mean time here is a picture of our canned stash – it is not amazing, but it is sustaining us through the winter.

Since this blog started off as a cooking blog I suppose its only fair to issue a warning, this will probably become more of a generic farmstead type blog in the future. We still like to eat and cook – but we are much closer to our food now that we are out in the sticks.

Our chickens are doing their job too, giving us eggs and lots of manure, their coop after some finagling, is finally working out better than we could have hoped. It is still stationary for the moment, but we are hoping to get it mobile here just in time for spring. The wheels are sitting in the kitchen – just showed up yesterday.

In addition to updates to the chicken coop we will be adding more fruit this year – we have a couple more fruit trees on the way and have purchased blackberries, blueberries and strawberries to plant this spring. We will be doing a bit of work to create a suitable planting area for them as we live on the worst drained hillside known to mankind.

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I have started to plant seeds in our grow box in the basement and thus far have twelve varieties of peppers planted, artichokes, rosemary and sage. In a couple of weeks we will start our tomatoes and a couple weeks after that our melons. I am hoping to get a cold frame in, in our root vegetable garden plot to get some onions started in the ground. And I am excited to try some garlic scapes when the garlic I planted last fall pops up this spring.

And like that we are off, I promise this year I will do better, if nothing else come and tag along on Instagram

Canning Banana Peppers

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but summer is winding down, it is coming to an end and in Michigan that means harvest time. Gardening will be done in another six weeks at most here in Michigan and right now the bulk of the harvest from my patio garden is ripening, and it is way more than we could possibly consume before it goes bad. That means one thing canning.

This is the first year I have grown Banana Peppers, my mother-in-law introduced them to me on pizza and they have been a must have since then. So when the rabbits destroyed my plants this year, I went out and bought one from the farmers market and low-and-behold they are resilient little plants. Soon after potting my plant from the farmers market the other two sprung back to life and have grown like weeds ever since.

Being the first year I have grown Banana Peppers this is also the first year I have canned them, I found some recipes online and did a best of both worlds (at least I hope) of the recipes I found. What I ended up with was a visually pleasing jar of canned Banana Peppers, that in spite of several warning I tried before the advised 5-6 weeks tasted pretty much like what I expected. The only difference is my expectations we based on what you get in the store and these have so much more flavor.

So without further ado here is the recipe per pint jar, I canned them as they came in as opposed to one big batch at a time and only wrote down the recipe I used per jar.

Ingredients
4-5 banana peppers (sliced into rings)
1/2 clove garlic (chopped)
1 c white vinegar
1/2 tsp pickling salt
1/8 tsp turmeric (for color)

Instructions
Place turmeric, salt and vinegar in a sauce pan and boil until salt if dissolved. If you have not done so already, slice peppers into rings. Pack garlic and peppers into a hot sterile jar, cover with vinegar solution leaving 1/2 inch head space. Remove air bubbles with a non metallic utensil. Cap jars and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool. Let sit for 5-6 weeks before eating (they are good before that too).

I also did jalapenos the same way, just omitted the turmeric. They also turned out great. Check back soon to see what else is cooking.

UPDATE: Make sure you add a pinch of alum powder to each jar or you will have mushy banana peppers, I did not do this with the first batch and they soon turned mushy. 🙁

Tag: peppers

Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016

Canning Banana Peppers