It is the year of beans. The wall o’ beans has been putting out copious amounts of purple, yellow, and striated beans, and there have been green bush beans, too. Even with the deer or rabbits nibbling the tops, I am gonna have a ton of beans.
Right now they’re skinny and tender and gorgeous, so I’m just starting with the canning. I’m not a HUGE fan of dilly beans, so I went looking for a few different recipes. I now am part of two Facebook groups that are very foodie, making all sorts of concoctions, and it’s pushing me a bit.
I made three jars (I love the 1 1/2 pint tall jars) of straight up dilly beans: garlic, dill head, piece of red pepper in a brine of vinegar/water/pickling salt.
I made another three jars of a spicy version: allspice, mustard seeds, peppercorn, dill head, garlic, red pepper. I was kind of intrigued by the allspice.
This morning I made a third kind, definitely of the foodie variety. I got it from Emeril’s site, so I figure it is safe and not too out there. I also replaced the white wine vinegar with apple cider, and I don’t know why. Otherwise I followed his recipe: a sprig of rosemary, a 3″ piece of lemon peel, a clove of garlic, and a brine of vinegar (2 cups white, 1/2 cup apple cider in my case… he calls for 2 1/2 cups white wine vinegar), 2 1/2 cups water, 2 Tbs sugar and 2 Tbs canning salt. Rosemary-lemon seems like a winning combination to me!
And, in an even more foodie move, here is my jar of nasturtium hot sauce. This was posted to one of the pages and comes from here. I love nasturtiums as a flower and especially since they are edible. Usually I just put them on the side of the plate and eat them after the meal!
I had so many flowers on my plant this year (it’s supposed to share a container with a thai pepper plant but it has sort of taken over), that this seemed a possibility.
I kept the nasturtiums in the vinegar with the pepper and garlic and gave it a little shake every morning for a week. I did add a few more flowers mid-week, and so I let it go longer. Then I made another batch the following week. Enough to get this jar. I only had yellow flowers so the liquid looks, well, a little “specimeny.” (I do have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.) That did make me laugh. And I have no idea what to do with it, but maybe if I get a fancy jar and work on my labeling skills it will look even better!
And hey. Aren’t I all gourmet.
