Peppers

Hello blog friends!

Today I have something a little different to show you.

My friend, Jen, had an abundance of peppers that she got

from her brothers abandoned garden.

She brought them to share with me and gave me

a ton of them.

Okay, so it wasn't a ton, but it was a LOT!

Here is what I got and that isn't even all that she had,

she shared with some others and had kept some for herself. 

 Now the question was, what do I do with all these peppers?

First of all, I had to figure out what they all were, so my 

oldest brother, who is my pepper expert told me.

Still what to do with them all?

I talked to my son, who had some ideas for me.
I shared some with him and then decided to dry some of them.

I cut up a bunch of them,

some of  each kind, laid them on cookie sheets and

popped them into the oven at 170* 

It took well over 12 hrs for them to dry, but dry they did.

These are my pablanos, when I got them from Jen,

we thought they were green bell peppers, so glad we didn't try

eating them!  They look awful, but I guess anything would

if it was dried in an oven over night.

Okay, I still had quite a few peppers left, so I talked to my 

brother again and he told me how to make hot sauce.

Here are my peppers, stems cut off and put in a pot with

vinegar, salt and garlic.

I let them simmer for quite a while, until they 

were cooked.

I let them cool a bit, then it was time for the blender.

They blended up so nice and smooth!

Luckily, I found these jars in my cupboard and could

fill them as well as the 8 I bought today.

Here are some ready to heat up in my hot water bath

to complete the canning process.

I'm pretty proud of myself, I've never done any canning

before, but I decided I'd do it and I did.

Got a bit of guidance from a couple friends and some

info from the internet and dove right in.

Here's what I ended up with.

And yes, there were a couple more to start.

One I dropped when I was putting it into the water bath,

the bottom fell right off the jar.  And one I 

dropped taking it out and it poured all over the stove top.

Considering I didn't really have the right things to pick them up

and to can them, I guess I did pretty well.

As for the taste?

I took a little taste of it and......

Oh boy is it hot sauce!

I'm calling it
Hot Mama's Hot Hot Sauce!

And these were still left.

I cut them up and froze them.

I also was given some green bell peppers by my friend

Judy.  I chopped those and froze them too.

I'd say I'm pretty well stocked on peppers.
One more thing to do with the peppers.
I plan to crush the dried ones,

some I'll store for cooking and some I'll use

to infuse some olive oil.

Jaryd and Sara infused some oil a couple years ago

at Christmas time and he has explained how he

did it to me.  Now to just get to it and 

infuse some oil.

Just have to figure out how I'm going to store that.

If you have any ideas for me, leave them in my comments.

I'll let y'all know how that goes too.

So glad you stopped by today,

like I often say, you never know what

you'll find on

Kristie Kreates.

See you again soon.

Freezing Strawberries

One of my favorite childhood summer memories is

when I'd hear the strawberry man coming down the street.

We're talking early to mid 60s here.
He'd have his truck and yell out

"Straaaaaawwwwberries, 3 quarts for a dollar!"

The women in the neighborhood would come out to buy 

his strawberries. That night we'd have strawberry shortcake

for dessert.

Can you imagine getting anything for that price these days?

The supermarket that I shop at, Tops, often has sales that are

buy 2 get 3 free and now and then they have

berries on that sale. 

When they were on sale this time I picked up 5 - 16 oz. packages.

Since there are only 2 of us, that's a lot of strawberries.

I gave a package to our daughter, and decided to do some freezing.

I cut the tops off and put them into a bowl of water to rinse.

I fill a bowl with cool water and don't over fill the bowl

with berries.

When you have enough to cover the top of the water

while floating, you've got enough.

I then swish them around a bit, the pick the out of the water

a couple at a time.
If you don't over crowd them, it gives space for the 

dirt particles and other "debris" to fall to the bottom of

the bowl.  You'll be surprised what comes off your berries.

I then place them onto paper toweling to dry.

Be sure they are not touching and that they can dry completely,

you don't want any water left on them at all,

as this will crystallize on the berries and we sure 

don't want that.  No freezer burn for me!

Drying completely can take an hour or two.

Once they are dry, place them onto a cookie sheet with a

dry piece of parchment paper lining the pan and place 

them in the freezer to freeze.

Freezing doesn't take long at all,

maybe an hour or so.

Once they are frozen you can put them into freezer

bags, remove as much air as possible.

Freezing them before putting them into the bags

will keep them from freezing together in a big clump.

This way you can take out only what you need.

I didn't freeze them all, I did eat some of them

and boy were they good.

In fact they were so good that when we had 

company come for dinner,

I picked up 5 more containers, made strawberry shortcake

with some and froze some more.

We're going to have some nice strawberries during the 

off season.

"Straaaaaawwwwwberries, 6 quarts in my freezer!"

Thanks for stopping by today,

I hope you've learned something and maybe

will try freezing some produce for your off season.

Come again soon,

you never know what you'll see on 

Kristie Kreates!