AWOL

On Thursday afternoon as I was finishing up some errands I realized that earlier in the day I'd finished my work for the week and that I had no responsibilities until Tuesday when classes started up again so I went up to visit my family.

It's nice being so close to "home" (it's strange to think of Philadelphia as home now that I haven't lived there since the 90s) so that these sorts of impulse visits, or casual trips are possible.  We didn't do too terribly much, but you don't need to when visiting family.  

My mother was always a pretty serious gardener and would can or otherwise preserve her bounty in the summer months (which I think is part of the reason that my home food preservation efforts don't seem as insane to me as they do to other people) but she has scaled back in recent years, mainly since she broke her back last year.  But since I've been getting into it, and she always enjoyed it, we decided to do some projects this weekend.  Unlike Northern Virginia, Southeastern Pennsylvania still has a good bit of land that hasn't been paved and McMansioned over and this land is amazingly close to highly developed areas and is still used as small scale, family type farms.  I'm not sure how that happened but it did and the end result is that with the slightest bit of research it's possible to find several small family farms within a short drive from our house (turns out my dad, an avid road cyclist, passes these places with regularity so they really ARE very close to the house).  

We went to one such place, Pete's Produce, and I was absolutely amazed by the quality, variety and quantity of produce there.  The one local farm (near-ish Vienna)  I've visited around here (and as far as I know, the only one that close to me), while still great totally pales in comparison.  Maybe the soil here is bad, or maybe these Vienna farmers aren't quite as good, or maybe the terrible heat and humidity does have that much of an effect on plants (I've read that spinach doesn't do well here because of the godawful weather) but seriously, Pete's was great.  Bell peppers of a huge variety of color (even purple, which I'd never seen before) and of a "normal" to "large" size (as opposed to my farm's sad puny sizes and a near total lack of anything but green), and just a much greater variety of stuff and lots more of it.  Sigh.

Anyway, we got out of there with a crate of Roma tomatoes (25lbs), 24 bell peppers (green, red, yellow and orange), 3 onions, a "sugar baby" watermelon, a dozen eggs and some homemade salsa.  The tomatoes happened this way: my dad wanted "3 kilos" (why he uses metric I'll never know) to make and preserve a tomato sauce so 7lbs went to him, then my mom and I canned the other 18lbs whole in quart jars.  I now have 4 quarts of whole Roma tomatoes to add to my stash.  But the real story of the weekend was the peppers.  My first attempt at relish is an astounding success and I will be repeating this in the very very near future.

It is amazingly easy and doesn't need to be canned if you're going to use it in the near future. And even if you don't have canning "stuff" you can still can it (you DO need mason jars and lids though).  Here's what to do--I highly recommend it 

Sweet Pepper Relish

If you intend to use it right away, it's all done!  Just refrigerate and enjoy.  I won't hazard a guess as to how long it will last in the fridge but just assume less than normal relish (there's no artificial preservatives in this relish, obviously) but still a fairly decent amount of time as vinegar, sugar and salt are all well known natural food preservatives and, well, you just used quite a bit of all three.

If you want to can this to save for later, just buy pint sized mason jars and run them through the dishwasher (or hand wash with very hot water).  Put the cans in the pot in very hot but not boiling water in a deep pot until you're ready to use them. Put lids and bands into a bowl and pour simmering water over them and allow to stand.  Never boil lids, you'll mess up the seal and it won't seal and you'll give yourself a headache.

Pull out the jar (use tongs or jar grippers), fill with relish, clean and dry rim very well (any little food particle will prevent it from sealing) and put lids and bands on (keep bands "fingertip tight" which means not loose but don't put any effort into making them actually tightened at all). Place back in pot upright (important: use a cooling rack or something similar to keep the jar from touching the bottom of the pot thereby preventing a jar explosion), bring to boil. Make sure jars are covered by 1-2 inches of water. Once the water is boiling, time 5 minutes (the recipe I found called for 5 minutes, other recipes may be longer or shorter).  

Remove from water, let cool.  After 12-24 hours, check to make sure jars sealed by checking the little pop top, and by removing the bands and seeing if you can remove the lid (you shouldn't be able to).  If the lid has sealed and you can't remove it manually, congrats, you just canned relish! If not, you have 24 hours to re-attempt a good seal.

Between 4 of us, we ate a pint in 2 days. On crackers.  It's really very very good :)

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