Pickled radishes

The past couple of years I have attempted to grow vegetables in my garden, the results were disappointing at best. The problem was we were trying to grow them at the back of our house which faces due North, so this year my husband dug up some of the front grass and we have created a victory garden at the front of our house.

And it has been far more successful, the above picture shows one of the beds in mid May with an abundance of radishes and a variety of lettuce that can already be harvested. I pulled a whole load of radishes that were getting quite large and decided that I would have to pickle them as I could not eat them all in a salad by myself.

I looked at several recipes on the Internet and combined a few to come up with something that would work for me.

1 cup white wine vinegar
1 cup water
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon of fennel seeds
8 medium radishes thinly sliced
½ small red onion, thinly sliced crosswise
Sprig of basil sliced

Preserving summer- Salsa

I love fresh salsa and make it all the time in the summer and even in the winter sometimes, and I have never  thought much of the salsa that you buy in jars.  So when I come across a recipe that says to add a jar of salsa I usually just go to the next recipe.

So I decided with 12 of the tomatoes I brought back from the Okanagan to make my own jarred salsa.

12 of the plum tomatoes chopped skins and seeds and all
1 large sweet onion chopped
2 peppers one red the other yellow chopped
1 jalapeno finely chopped
1 tablespoon of ground cumin
10 tablespoons of lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
handful of chopped cilantro.

I added every thing except the cilantro to a large pot.

Preserving summer- Tomato puree

I spent the last few days up in the Okanagan Valley, a little piece of heaven 4 hours drive from Vancouver.

Looking over Naramata 

Though the valley, especially around Naramata has been almost taken over by the wine industry, there are still some orchards and small farms selling wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables.  Amongst other things we brought back a case of plum tomatoes, as I wanted to continue with my eat fresh, eat local lifestyle. This would mean preserving some of the fruits of the summer to consume in the depths of winter.

I have not really canned before, so I am no expert, but there are plenty of them on the web, which is where I did my research.  There seemed to be 2 important things when canning tomatoes, add lemon juice to up the ph levels and to process in a water bath for 30 hours or until the lids are sealed.