Pepper Jelly - September 28, 2022

Yesterday's plan was to make pepper jelly with the last of the garden peppers.  I hurried home after work only to realize that I didn't have any vinegar, and I was not about to go to the store.  So I just washed and chopped the jalapenos and put them in the refrigerator.  It turned out that I was nearly a cup short of peppers, too.  So today I stopped after work and bought vinegar, plus an orange bell pepper and a green bell pepper, to throw some color in the mix.  Most of the little pepper bits wanted to float to the top of the jelly, so I let it cool and thicken a little bit, then I flipped the sealed jars over to better distribute the bits.  It's pretty in the jar.

Today my daughter-in-law dropped off three mum plants that the local agricultural students grew (I think).  I bought some mums from the ag boys a couple of years ago, and they dropped off the scraggliest bunch of mums I'd ever seen, which pretty much dampened my eagerness to buy any more from them.  But when The Granddaughter is the salesperson, it's a different story.  Happily, this new set of mums is stellar - nice ones, just in the right budding stage, and wrapped in a plastic sleeve to keep the limbs from breaking.  Or so I hope.  I haven't inspected them, yet, because I had to rush in and make pepper jelly and fix supper.

I'm sitting on the porch tonight, wrapped up in a shawl.  It's a little chilly.  Today, I noticed that the days are getting shorter.  It'll be soup weather pretty soon.