Y'all know how much I LOVE getting stuff in the mail but this time it's YOUR CHANCE.
I've been asked to share with my fellow freaks the chance to win a free Home Canning Kit along with the much loved Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving by the nice canning freaks at Jarden Home Brands, makers of ANYTHING you need to can. I just went tonight to my favorite canning supply store, The Brooklyn Kitchen, and hauled home on the bus a case of their Ball wide mouth quart jars. At the store they had a display of the VERY prize up for grabs, and let me just say, I'M JEALOUS.
All YOU have to do is leave a comment and I'll pick a winner by August 12. Tell me about your favorite thing to pickle, preferably, or just your favorite canning memory.
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29 comments:
I've not done much canning, but I do like to make pickles! Thanks for your great blog, I am enjoying it!
Sadly, the only thing I have ever pickled is my liver. Probably because I don't want to shell out the duckets for a canning kit. You could change my life with this contest. That's all I'm sayin'.
hi there -- one of my summer goals was to can and pickle more -- my favorite summer project so far? half sours, fermented on the counter in a ball quart jar. took about a week, and the recipe, from The Joy of Pickling, did not lie when it said that these would still taste like cucumbers, but "cucumbers that have died and gone to heaven"! yum.
i have made more than a few fermented pickles, but the best batch i ever made was the smallest; i was looking for a big pickling crock, but could only find a small, i gallon crock, so i thought i'd try it out. best.pickles.ever! small is sometimes better.
I would watch my Mom canning in the heat of the summer and told myself I would never do that!! Never say never, our family pickle recipe is better than any I have tasted from a store, so I have been forced into canning, and have grown to love it!! Another generation "puckered", I mean suckered in!!
I love pickled pepperoncini and green beans! Never have done it myself, but I'd love to learn.
your site is one of the home pages I have set. Life's had me down and I haven't pickled since I was a little kid with my dad... it would be a great way to get started again!!!
Please PICKle me, I have a CANNED do attitude.I'm not just jerkin your gherkin. It would be SWEET , and I would not be SOUR. That is my dill.
Dear PickleFreak,
In about two weeks I'm going to start having more cucumbers than I can put in my refrigerator. Just today I went out and counted at minimum twenty baby cukes on the vines. And a couple hundred little yellow flowers.
I'm tragically not working, so I would welcome the opportunity to pickle all these cucumbers, and stash those suckers in cute little jars. Sadly, I have no canning equipment.
If bribery is an option, I could offer several jars of eventual pickles from my garden. I'll even make a batch to your exacting specifications.
Randy's really gunning for it with all the fancy pickle puns. I may not have a chance!
Bribery IS an option (especially a pickle bribe)!!
I love to pickle Zuchinni, some people don't like it but I think it is great. :) I also love to pickle cucumbers, beets, and pretty much anything. Great giveaway!
Dilly beans are my favorite thing to can. I remember spending my summers in Vermont when I was little and learning how to make them from one of the farmers and having a hard time not eating all the green beans before they made their way into the jars
My mom used to make me can sweet pickles which I abosolutely hate. However, the desire to can foods never left me.
I like to make sweet pickled cucumbers, peppers, and onions. Delicious!
About 10 years ago a friend and I flew down to Nassau, Bahamas to gamble and relax and watch the Broncos beat the Packers in Super Bowl XXXII. There were many incredible stories that I earned in my experiences that week but this one in particular concerns a lovely little edible firecracker called a goat pepper.
We had been at the hotel/casino for a few days and had already sampled the best of what the tourist eateries had to offer and decided to venture off into the city to find some cuisine that was a bit more authentic. At the front desk we asked a local girls where the locals ate. She directed us to a tiny restaurant 15 blocks away. Her directions included a warning that we would most likely be the only white folks in the neighborhood and to watch our backs.
It took some searching and scanning for shady characters, but finally we located it and ducked inside quickly. We ordered several specialties of the house, the highlight of which was a basket of fried conch with some local fruit slaw. When it arrived we asked her if they had any hot sauce and she brought out a bottle of Tabasco sauce. We asked if they had anything else and she shook her head, but then said - “Well, we have the homemade hot sauce that WE use, but you wouldn’t be interested in that. It’s probably a little to hot for you (White Boys).”
Well the thought of local homemade hot sauce had our mouths watering and our bellies growling and after we assured her several times that we had plenty of experience with spicy food she brought us a bowl of their goat pepper sauce. We asked her what a goat pepper was and she just said that it was a very spicy pepper that grew on the island. I later found out that what they call a “goat pepper” is basically the same thing as a habanero.
The sauce had 2 primary ingredients: lemon juice, and thinly sliced goat peppers. With the fried conch it was absolute heaven. It had crazy spice behind it but it didn’t smack you in the face. The lemon introduction of it was spot on with the seafood (especially conch) and then the flames would rise and set your saliva glands to squirting with ecstacy. For seafood it was the best hot sauce I have ever tried. I swore then and there that when I returned to the states I would share this great discovery with all of my friends who appreciated the finer points of 4-alarm cuisine.
When we got back home to the states I was still pumped up about my new culinary discovery and I set out to fulfill my oath of sharing the best seafood hot sauce with my asbestos-tongued friends. So I went out and got like 48 ball jars, several gallons of lemon juice and a pound and a half of habanero peppers (that’s a lot of peppers people). I got the pots a boiling for the canning process and prepared the other spices and oils and set out to slice up all of the peppers.
I mentioned before that while the habanero is a powerful pepper, the heat comes on rather slowly as the heat is well embedded in the oils of the pepper. As I was getting toward the end of slicing up habaneros I noticed that that my fingers were starting to burn so I finished quickly and washed my hands as soon as possible. It was too late, the oils had thoroughly infiltrated my fingernails.
Within 15 minutes the heat had progressed to the point where it felt like someone had hammered nails through the tips of every one of my fingers. I washed them and washed them and washed them, but nothing would take away the feeling of my napalmed fingertips. I sucked it up and finished the canning job and eventually had 48 small jars of homemade goat pepper sauce with which to share with my brethren, but I did not sleep that night. In fact it took about a week for the heat under my fingernails to finally and fully subside.
The goat pepper sauce was a success. Most people I have it too loved it, but for some people it was too spicy. I would do it all again but this time I’m putting on my surgeon’s gloves before I attempt to tangle with dangerous produce.
Yoyo Kid, is it OK if I call you "Goat" from now on? Awesome story!
My favorite canning so far has been my first canning. Recently I made blueberry jam, from the berries I picked at a local farm. I'm so proud to look at the jars in the pantry, knowing that in the winter I'll have blueberry jam for all my needs, and best of all, I know where everything in that jar came from.
I'm pretty new to pickling so all I can say is cucumbers, but I'm looking forward to trying out some new recipes. Watermelon rinds have my interest right now!
trying to save so I can go on a little journey so canning would help. I recall my mother making umpteen jars of marmalade a a child and always being shooed out of the kitchen
Ooh! I pickled red onions! They turned out sooo good. And guess what?! August 12th is my 49th birthday! I think that warrants a canning gift, don'tcha think?! ;)))
I have grown to love canning. I'm not that into pickles (probably because my high school boyfriend's grandma made the best pickles in the world and I don't think I could ever come near her status), but I put up lots of fruit and jams....although this year, my boys have eaten most of my fruit before I can put it up!!!
My grandma taught me how to pickle and can. My uncle has dubbed me "The Pickle Princess" and insists on jars of my short brined dills for Christmas/birthday gifts. My favorite thing to pickle is cucumbers, although I'm branching out. This year I'm trying to get some ginger pickled. Can't wait to see how that turns out!
The only thing I have ever pickled is cucumbers. However, are garden is overrun with zuchini this year, so I may have to try out something new.
rsgrandinetti@yahoo(Dot)com
during my summer-long quest to find my favorite pickles, i have thought about canning a lot. every time i sampled a new kind of pickle and found it lacking in some department, i thought, 'why not just pickle my own stuff?'. so i will. but alas, i own no canning equipment. so this would be a great prize to win. i would can all kinds of pickles (from dilly beans to cucumbers to spicy pickled peppers), plus applesauce, jam, chutney, and other kinds of preserves.
I pickled sugar snap peas earlier this summer that were AMAZING. check out the recipe here if you want :)
http://whitneyinchicago.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/pickling/
I like to can fruit preserves, but am attempting to make pickles tomorrow with bounty from a friend's CSA share. They're on vacation and I thought it would be a nice present to give them something from their share when they got back.
I like pickled garlic. So yummy!
I would love to win the kit so I could can jams and fruit. My CSA has been giving us great fruits and veggies and I would to preserve them. I can imagine how great they will smell and taste when I open them this winter.
I'm not gonna win this am I?
My grandma loved to pickle daikon (white radish). I'd love to win so I can learn to do the same and teach others by hosting a party at my apt at some point.
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