Pepper Jelly

I love hot pepper jelly. For the past few years, I've made a batch or two every summer. Pepper jelly is a little tricky. Perhaps it has to do with the level of capsaisin in the various peppers I've grown, or the ratio of hot peppers to sweet peppers (I'm never very precise about the hot/sweet ratio), but sometimes the stuff sets into real jelly, and sometimes it stays syrup-y. Most of the time, I don't care if it sets or not; the syrup-y stuff makes a delicious dipping sauce for chicken or smoked sausage. On a couple of occasions, I've left it in the jars for a couple of months, then opened all the jars, dumped the contents into a pan, added more fruit pectin to stiffen it up a bit, and re-canned it.

I made pepper jelly today. Judging by the film of jelly remaining in the pan after I filled the jars, it looks like this batch is going to set perfectly. I'm going to get the recipe down before I forget it.

3 cups of chopped peppers - half sweet peppers and half hot (jalapeno and chili) peppers. (I used both red and green peppers. I removed the seeds and ribs from the sweet peppers and from about half of the hot peppers. The seeds don't bother me one bit.)
3 cups of apple cider vinegar
13 cups of sugar
1 package of powdered fruit pectin
2 pouches of liquid fruit pectin

Mix the chopped peppers, the vinegar, the sugar, and the powdered fruit pectin in a pan over high heat. Stirring almost constantly, bring the mixture to a roiling boil. Add the liquid fruit pectin. Return to a rolling boil, stirring constantly, and boil for 1 minute. Take the pan off the heat. Skim off the foam. Pour into jars. (This batch made 6 half-pint jars and 3 pint jars.) Wipe off the rims, attach the lids, and water bath for 10 minutes.

I do not add green food coloring to my pepper jelly as some folks do. The natural color of the jelly is a beautiful gold color, with flecks of green and red peppers.

If I can remember to buy more supplies tomorrow, I may make another batch, as we go through the stuff like crazy. We brush it on chicken on the grill, or use it as a dipping sauce for chicken nuggets or smoked sausage. Mixed with ketchup, it makes a delicious topping for meat loaf. Though I haven't tried it, I bet it would make a good glaze for baked ham or ribs. And, of course, it's good with cream cheese and crackers.

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Misery loves company

I just read that Martha Stewart lost most of her tomato crop to blight this year.

http://www.themarthablog.com/2009/08/the-tomato-blight-in-my-garden.html?pid=11184#gallery-jump11184

I feel so much better.

Not that I have anything personal against Martha. In fact, I've been her fan for many years. So I'm not happy that blight got her tomatoes. In fact, I commiserate with her for her loss.

The point is that she has a lot of resources at her disposal. (I am particularly envious of her helpers, Shaun and Wilmer). She probably has the healthiest soil money can buy; I bet it's positively bristling with exquisite home-made compost; I bet there's not a weed or a blade of grass anywhere within the confines of the garden plot. And you know Shaun and Wilmer busted their asses picking off diseased leaves and dusting/spraying the vines with organic fungicides the minute the first signs of blight appeared. Shoot, I bet they even slept in the garden. (I mean, come on...how would YOU like to be the one to break the news to Ms. Stewart that her heirloom tomatoes are croaking?) So if her tomatoes can catch blight, the rest of us don't stand a chance.

Martha, if you're reading this, don't save seeds from this year's crop, and throw away those nice bamboo canes and get new ones. And if you figure out how to stop the blight from coming back next year, drop me a line.

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Evaluation

It pains me to admit this, but I have very nearly forsaken the garden, already. I blame it on the rain. We've had a lot of rain lately, and far more than usual rain all summer. Every time I plan to get in the garden after work, it rains before I get home. The low end of the original garden is so wet that it'll suck your shoes right off your feet if you try to walk the bean rows. I last set foot among the beans over a week ago, and had to fight my way between the tangled vines and battle squadrons of hungry mosquitoes to gather a bucket full of beans. Nanny felt up to doing the snapping and shelling. I came home the next day and canned what may have been my last canner-load of jars this season.

The tomato crop is officially shot. The once-lush plants are now bare, tangled sticks. What little fruit remains on the vines is sickly and unappetizing. When I braved the grass and the chiggers last week to gather some peppers, I noticed that some of the tomatoes are blooming again. It may be that we'll have a few more to eat before the season is over but right now even the green tomatoes are cracked and bursting.

Overall, this gardening season has been a huge disappointment. The 100+ tomato plants, though diligently tended, produced about as much usable fruit as last year's 50 plants. The yellow squash drowned right off the bat, and though I planted more seeds, they didn't come up. We've harvested ONE zucchini from our four zucchini plants. (With four plants, we should've been leaving zucchini on the neighbors' doorsteps by now.) Only the okra and - God bless 'em - the eggplants have performed as expected...but who likes eggplants, anyway?

I am tired of the garden. Tired of picking. Tired of canning. Tired of the boxes of jars and lids and canning equipment crowding my dining room table. Tired of finding stray tomato seeds stuck to every surface in my kitchen. Just plain tired. Last week, when Pop-Pop mentioned that he knew someone who would pick the beans for half of the take, I jumped at the offer. Let's see how well they deal with the blood-sucking mosquitoes and the shoe-sucking mud.

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