Yes I Can

I think the appeal of canning, for me, is not wasting anything. Even my small garden will produce a bounty that is overwhelming. This weekend I had to face the bowls and bags of peppers in my refrigerator with the realization that it was use it or lose it time. I ad-libbed a recipe using the vinegar-sugar base I strained and saved from the previous weekend’s canning of sweet-hots or bread-and-butter jalapenos. I enlisted the help of my twenty-five year old food processor and chopped every bell pepper, green chile, pimiento, onion, and garlic clove in the house. To this I added the head of cabbage I discovered once all of the peppers were out of the refrigerator. The jalapeno-infused vinegar was the perfect complement to this mélange of vegetables, making (what I am labeling the jars as) chow-chow.



Canning seems to be a manic activity for me, so while I was at it, and since my kitchen was now a complete disaster area, I decided to keep going. The morning’s harvest yielded a fair amount of green beans and I recalled once being served a Bloody Mary with pickled green beans instead of the requisite celery stick, so I was off. Out came the vinegar and a few hours later I had jars of lovely pickled beans.



Sadly, I have not yet made and canned my own tomato juice, so there were no Bloody Marys to be had. But, I have a near empty refrigerator and a pantry full of the last of my summer garden’s offerings – and nothing went to waste.