Tourism, canning and cooking

Sean and I decided to go down to the Mall yesterday - not the end where the 50th anniversary March celebration was but the other end - the National Archives and National Building Museum.

At the Archives, there is an exhibit called DOCUAMERICA- a series of photographs taken by photographers for the EPA in the 1970's.

After that we strolled through the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden and sat by the fountain.  My favorite piece is the Typewriter Eraser by Claes Oldenburg.

Then headed to the National Building Museum to play mini golf and to see an exhibit on the

Palaces for the People: Guastavino and America’s Great Public Spaces

It's about a Spanish father and son who built some of the amazing structures with domes in the early 20th century, such as the Boston Public Library.

Exhausted coming home but a Garden Goddess's job is never done (thank you Kathryn for my new name).  So while Sean relaxed (ok, he did some pruning in the yard) I made zucchini relish.  A new recipe from Food in Jars.  Most of the recipes I've tried in this book have worked - a few exceptions didn't turn out quite right - I have strawberry syrup instead of jam but who cares!

Zucchini, peppers

Vinegar, red pepper, mustard seeds, celery seeds, sea salt, sugar

Grate zucchini and onion, chop pepper.  Cook down with vinegar.  Drain, add more vinegar, spices and sugar.

Put in jars.  Process in water bath

Yum

A little leftover goes into pretty jar and back into the fridge

All done

Add to the canning shelf in basement.  Running out of room!

While the jars were processing, I decided to use up the last of the fresh peaches and make peach-blackberry cobbler.  Curtesy of King Arthur Baking Book.  Most cobblers are cooked fruit with a biscuit topping but this had a pie topping.  Delicious.

Ready to go in the oven

Out of the oven

Trust your instincts

Because when you don't this is what happens

I've had about 3 lbs of hot peppers in the freezer since last summer.  

My gardening buddy grows hot peppers and he was away most of last summer so I harvested them.  The past couple of years, I have made a kind of hot sauce but I wanted to do something different this year.  I found a recipe for a kind of hot pepper condiment that looked good.  So today was the day.  The peppers sat in the fridge overnight to defrost.

Sean was a trooper and cut the stems off, then put them in the blender/food processor to grind fine.

We opened the kitchen door, put on gloves and a mask and the smell was not too bad.  The paste looked pretty good too.

We put the peppers in jars, added some salt and covered with heated white vinegar.

Here is where I did not listen to myself.  There jars came out of the boiling water hot, the vinegar was hot yet when I touched the jars to screw on the lids, the jars were stone cold.  Huh?  I said why are these jars cold and Sean answered, well the peppers were half frozen.  I'm thinking to myself, ok, if I put cold jars back into the hot boiling water, they are going to break.  So what did I do? I put the cold jars into the hot water and THEY BROKE!  Well, 2 out of the 4 jars broke and let me tell you, the vapors from two broken jars of hot peppers drove Sean and I outside.

Stupid, stupid stupid. I should have taken the time to start over and heat up the pepper mixture and then repack the jars.

2 jars survived, plus a half filled one that I didn't process.  Lesson learned.