I CAN't stop......

After the garden clean up, the baskets of leftovers got stuck on the porch.  

Every morning I got up and they waved through the glass doors.... Hey remember us? 

Talk about spinning straw into gold.  It kills me to throw stuff out and I think I go through this every year.  Knowing the hot peppers wouldn't last long, they were cleaned and stuffed.  I contemplated giving them to the chickens, especially after they just tore through my potato patch.  I came to my senses and stuffed the peppers instead.  I guess I could have stuffed a couple chickens too.....

 Three big cookie sheets and still there were peppers floating in the sink.  I was starting to feel like Micky Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice except I had marching peppers!  The peppers just kept coming! Slicing up the left overs, dumping them into pint jars with cloves of garlic and pouring hot vinegar solution over them before you could blink they were processed and in the basement vault. 

I have lost count on these peppers but if we eat them every week until next August, there will still be a bag lingering in the bottom of the freezer.  

On to the eggplant.....  found a new recipe for caponata that is canned and not frozen.  Had cocoa powder in the recipe too.  It's freezing and I might be needing a few extra antioxidants ..... well at least an anti-depressent.   After 7 pints of caponata I still had three eggplant staring me in the face. Yup, I am depressed.  Sliced, grilled and topped with oven roasted tomatoes and provolone cheese on whole grain bread.  Yum!   Had it again for lunch the next day.  They are finally gone..... but then I've said this before.

The weather has turned ..... hail one day, snow the next.  Today, roaring winds all day.  We have been robbed!  Fall lasted 3 days and winter arrived.  The wind chills have been in the low 20's, the chickens are hunkered down and eggs are getting few and far between.  I am using my shoulders as ear muffs and will stay this way until spring I fear.  

 OH JOY!!  

It's the season of the carb.  

The vat of granola has appeared on the counter.  

Bread baking is back just so I can turn the stove on to warm the house. 

We caved on Friday and turned the furnace on after discovering the butter on the counter was harder than the stick in the fridge. 

Hamburger buns waiting for burgers hot off the grill.

 

God help me I am still putting stuff in jars.  I can't seem to stop.  Every time I grab the canning pots and start for the basement I think about something else I wanted to try.  My only excuse at this point,  I have never finish canning season, before tearing into show season.  This year I have one show scheduled so I have time to can!  This will be the first year the master list will be totally done!  I am just giddy about this!  

The last jars headed to the basement.... I swear!

7 jars of stout jelly.  Yes, you read that correctly, beer jelly.  It's really good on a rye or pumpernickle bread with a sharp cheese spread and one hot pepper ring.  We couldn't stop eating it.  Stuck a few apples on the side but we just kept eating cheese and beer jelly......  

I used Elliot Ness from Great Lakes Brewery. 

The tall jars in the back are filled with pineapple chunks in brown sugar rum sauce.  This stuff will rock the sweet potatoes and oven baked squash this year.  It might make it's way to top off a pound cake or two.  

The stout jelly foams like nothing I ever canned!  The stuff is alive! 

Thought it would calm down but it doesn't until it hits the jars. 

The foam jellies in the jar too!  

It's jelly with a head!  

Amber clear and very pretty!   

We love it!