Canning our garden harvest

My husband and I have been busy bees trying to keep up with our garden. With over 10 tomatilla plants and 20 tomato plants and dozens of a varieties of pepper plants we certainly have our hands full.

We started canning for the first time last year. Neither one of us really had any idea how to do this. I didn’t exactly have any warm and fuzzy memories of parents or grandparents doing any such thing. So, through a little trial and error we started off with a couple of simple recipes from the Ball Blue Book guide to preserving. We bought the necessary pots and tools, burned a few fingers in the process, forgot to sterilize lids and promptly had to start all over. Trust me, you only forget once! Now that we’re ‘pros’, canning has become much easier and more routine and we work well as a team.

Here are some of the things we’ve been canning this season.

1) Tomatilla salsa, mild and spicy

2) Jalapeno salsa

3) Pickled banana peppers

4) Pickled zucchini spears

5) Dill pickles

What zucchini harvest?

I have to laugh and giggle at these different gardening blogs I keep coming across….what to do with all your zucchini….too much zucchini? Here’s a fun recipe to try…..

Really?

Reeeeeally?

Too MUCH zucchini? They clearly do NOT live in Florida, home of mold, fungus and waaaaaay to much humidity. Not exactly the best environment for zucchini.

Every year we struggle to grow zucchini and summer squash every season. We’re lucky if we get a handful. So if you have any brilliant ideas on how to grow zucchini in Florida, please enlighten us.

Our weather this year has been very mild and dry. Not typical Florida weather. Who named it the Sunshine state by the way?

Say hello to our little flying saucers…..

We have harvested about twice this amount so far this season. We are mainly using the zucchini for juicing. The flying saucer zucchini also works really well in sauteed dishes. It has a great texture and hold up well with heat.

Dr Oz, you are NOT smarter than an Okinawa Sweet Potato

I’ve been told many a time I have strange eating habits. Huh, what’s so weird about eating purple sweet potatoes?

My husband and I instantly fell in love with these potatoes while on our honeymoon in Hawaii last year. The yummy Okinawa Purple Sweet potato. Wow, babe, we could grow these in our Florida climate!!  So when we returned home, we searched endlessly. We tried California, local Oriental Food Markets, Hawaii, and yes, Japan, but no luck. What the heck? We finally discovered Hawaii has a little problem. They are called weevils. These weevils tirelessly decimate their crops. Hawaii’s answer to the weevil? Irradiate the crops. Well, darn it, you can’t sprout a sweet potato that’s been irradiated. And Hawaii has strict regulations about importing and exporting foods. It’s impossible to grow this sweet potato outside of Hawaii.

Apparently, Dr Oz, in all his brilliance, isn’t aware of this either. The Okinawan Sweet Potato: A Purple Powerhouse of Nutrition | Down to Earth. Thank you for the tease Dr Oz! Well I hope the Hawaiian’s are enjoying their new ‘superfood’. What about the rest of America?

Well, we found another purple sweet potato, the Stoke’s Purple Sweet Potato. (well, technically its a yam, but no one needs to know, shhhhhhh)   Purple Sweet Potatoes (Purple Yam) – Home of the Stokes Purple Sweet Potato – Stokes Foods, Inc..

So, if you’re invited to our house, and you’re served this for dinner…

know that a lot of time, hard labor, sweat, love, and patience, went into this fabulous tasting potato.

And no more making fun of me, Dr Oz thinks I’m cool for eating a superfood! 🙂

For more info Sweetpotato Production Guides for Hawaii.

Pear and Fennel Juice

Juicer required.

Recipe

1/4 cup Fennel

1 pear

Calories: 100

A great souce of Vitamin C.