Canning Peppers

We picked these beauties out of our garden recently...

We most often use jalapeno and banana peppers in cooking (i.e. nachos and pizza!), so I wanted to pickle and can small batches of these for us to use over the winter. The instructions below are assuming you know some basics about canning, such as cleaning jars and keeping them warm, wiping rims clean, etc. If you need more specific instructions about this, please comment below.

For the jalapenos:

Place one small clove of garlic in the bottom of a half-pint jar. On top of the garlic I squeezed in 4 sliced jalapeno peppers, it was a tight fit so you really have to pack them in. Heat 1/2 cup white vinegar and 1/2 cup water on stove until simmering. Pour liquid over peppers, leaving 1/2in headspace. You will have some liquid leftover if you are only doing one half-pint at a time. Add 1/8t. pickling salt and follow the instructions for adding Ball Pickle Crisp Granules to help keep your peppers crunchy. Process for 10 minutes in waterbath canner.
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For the banana peppers:

Place one small clove of garlic in the bottom of a half-pint jar. On top of the garlic I was able to fit in 2 sliced banana peppers. Heat 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup water and 1/8 cup sugar to a boil. Pour liquid over peppers, leaving 1/4in headspace. Add 1/2t. pickling salt and follow the instructions for adding Ball Pickle Crisp Granules to help keep your peppers crunchy. Process for 10 minutes in waterbath canner.  *Note: You can add turmeric for color, but it is not necessary for flavor.

My husband taste tested both peppers last night, after they had sat for over a week to let the flavors come together. He loved them both!

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Last night we also had the chance to play outside in the rain! It was warm and sunny, but we had a rain shower with big, heavy rain drops that made it perfect for play!

Canning Season Is Upon Us!

A few weekends ago, I had one of those moments. My husband and I looked down at our breakfast plates and then looked at each other. "You're turning into your Nona," he said. Yep, there we were eating homemade biscuits, bacon, homemade sausage gravy, and some of my canned applesauce that I had heated up on the stove. It was a Nona breakfast for sure. What can I say? I learned from the best!

Where did that strawberry jam come from, you ask? That's more to my "turning into Nona" story. I've been making jam with her since I was young and for the first time, I decided to try it without her help this year to see if I could do it. Much to my surprise...success!

One of my besties and I picked berries in the morning. They have the BEST berries at Fulton Farms! So sweet and delicious, and reasonably priced if you pick them yourself. Then we came back to my house to try our hand at jam making. Did I mention we listened to some good ole Emmy Lou Harris, just like I always have with Nona?

Well, we were far from perfect and it took a loooong time for the canner to get hot enough (novice mistake, lol), but in the end, our jam is seriously delish! If I remember correctly, I think we got roughly 20 pints to a gallon of berries (with a little leftover to eat!), or about 40-45 of the smaller 8oz jars.

 

Pure goodness in a jar! Strawberries (picked and canned the same day), sugar and some pectin.

Happenings Around the House

I realized as I was rocking my youngest last night that we have made a big jump from Minnie to Princesses around here. She still likes Minnie, but we are definitely in the Disney Princess era, especially Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (which she's never seen). Anyway, she wants everything princess right now. We found some old disney princess play shoes and an old pink princess tshirt at a garage sale last week and she barely lets me take them off. Literally. She would prefer to sleep in the shoes if I would let her and she wants to wear that one pink princess shirt 24 hours a day. Every. Single. Day. And whenever she puts on a dress now, she always looks down and says she's a princess and seems genuinely convinced that it must be so.

 

 

School is going well with our oldest, seems like we do a lot of unschooling around here. But his writing is improving, he's off the charts in math, and still progressing with his reading. He can also tell you all about our furnace, how it works and why, and he can tell you all the phases of the moon in perfect order and what they look like. He knows all kinds of random things like that because he asks. He likes to figure everything out. Just like his Daddy and my maternal Pappa.

 

 

Our youngest is doing great, too. she still knows her letters and their sounds, she has started coloring more (both my kids hate coloring), and she can now write a number one. She can also now count with meaning. She's been able to count for a long time now, but she's recently understood that when you say 1-2-3 and so on, that correlates to a certain number of items.

 

 

Also, we finally have all of the garden planted - yay! Lots of science can be discovered in the garden and we are all looking forward to the fruits of our labor. This year we have 12 tomato plants, 3 rows of potatoes, 3 rows of green beans, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini, bell peppers, snap peas, banana and jalapeno peppers. Should be an interesting summer! The kids love going outside every morning to see what has popped up overnight!

 

And the biggest news around here is that we recently found out our big guy has a food allergy to dairy. It was a major blow to us because his favorite food ever is cheese and he chugs milk all day long. But, it answers multiple prayer requests with just one solution, and it is so like God to do that. Wrap it all up in one package for us to be able to get it under control. Our doctor explained that he doesn't digest the milk protein. Instead, his body reacts to it by having an adrenaline rush of sorts, keeping him full of adrenaline all day. This is why he struggles with naps and bedtime even though he's tired, and why he wakes up exhausted at 6:14am everyday. The doctor thinks this is also the cause of his allergies/drainage and ear infections, and even his sometimes ornery behavior.

 

 

He's been off of dairy for over a week now and we have noticed a huge difference. Last week, he took a nap everyday without complaining. No running in and out of his room for hours fighting sleep. Same at bedtime. It was amazing. He was also a little different behaviorally and overall, just more pleasant. He accidentally had dairy twice this weekend and whoa, he's like a different kid again. He hasn't taken a nap since then and he's been waking up at 6ish every morning. He's exhausted and whiny and cranky and ultra hyper.

I'm sad that he has to go without his favorite food. It breaks my heart. I want him to have everything he wants in life, and I understand his love for yummy, gooey cheese immensely. I'm sad that I have to call his teachers at church and tell them no more goldfish. I really hope he doesn't have to be the different one in class, that they can all just have a different snack. I don't want my children to ever go without anything they want, even if it is something trivial like cheese. So we will cut out the dairy around here and we will pray. I am believing that God will restore my oldest's body to new and he will someday be able to enjoy cheese again.