Keith and the Girl to listen on on my iPod this weekend – a weekend spent entirely in the damn kitchen – I might have gone a wee bit mad.
Saturday, first thing, I made jalapeno jelly. Now, I know that I’ve mentioned many times that I don’t like jalapenos and I don’t like green peppers, and this jalapeno jelly has three green (bell) peppers in it and seven jalapenos. I made the jelly – it’s a fairly easy recipe – and I processed it in a water bath canner, and when the jars were cooling on the table, Fred could wait no longer, and he demanded that we open a jar, so we did. He tried a spoonful and made a considering face.
“The vinegar gives it a zing,” he said. “Here, try it!” Reluctantly, I gave it a try, and I LOVED it. I got out the Ritz crackers and ate several of them with jalapeno jelly on top, and finally had to leave the kitchen lest I eat every last bit of the jar of jelly. We ended up with a dozen jelly jars of the stuff, and Saturday night talked about making a few more batches and selling ’em on eBay, but an in-depth discussion of the cost of buying jars and pectin and having to ship stuff showed that people would have to pay something like $10 per jar (including shipping) just to cover the costs of buying all the supplies, and that’s a lot to ask for a jelly jar of jalapeno jelly, so I don’t think we’re going to.
(Flickr)
Also on Saturday, I finally got around to adding vinegar to the habanero hot sauce, and Fred tested it, exclaimed “Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!” and proclaimed it a success. We have – I shit you not – 26 habaneros in the refrigerator, and we talked about making and selling habanero hot sauce, but it’s another case of having to charge too much just to recoup the cost of making the stuff, so I don’t see that happening, either.
I’m amazed at how many peppers are still coming in. I thought peppers really liked it hot, and it’s cooled down a bit lately, but the peppers are coming in like crazy.
What else did I do on Saturday? Oh, right – I blanched and peeled a big-ass box of tomatoes (bought at a local produce stand, because our tomatoes are done for the year) and then let them simmer for several hours to make tomato sauce. I peeled and cored a big bag of apples – also bought at the produce stand – and made apple sauce. At some point in there, I threw together what we’ve taken to calling Tex-Mex for dinner, and I washed approximately one hundred and forty-three thousand dishes, wiped down the counter a thousand times, and yelled at Spot to go away ’cause I didn’t have any goddamn food for him.
After dinner, I made a batch of ice cream with our new ice cream maker. We had banana ice cream (I made vanilla ice cream and added three ripe liquified bananas to it) and it was pretty good, but both Fred and I agreed that it was a little too greasy and in the future I think we’re going to try frozen yogurt instead, since that’s what we’re used to.
Sunday I hit the ground running, taking my shower as soon as I got up, scooping out the litter boxes, and giving the kittens their medication (more on that in the next section), so I could get started on the shit I needed to get done in the kitchen. Once the usual morning chores were done (and the first load of laundry was washing), I chopped up cucumbers and green peppers and onion to make sweet pickle relish. I think I mentioned that Fred did a second planting of cucumbers, and the cucumbers started coming in with a vengeance, and I would surely like to go back a few months and kick my ASS for even suggesting that he do a second planting. What kind of fucking idiot AM I, anyway?
(I informed him, yesterday, that he should feel free to pull up the cucumber plants, because I’ll shoot dead the next person who brings any cucumbers into my house.)
Once the stuff for sweet pickle relish was chopped on left to soak, I got out the tomato sauce I’d made Saturday, put it on the stove, and threw a couple of packages of mushrooms, a few bay leaves, some Italian Seasoning, a couple of cans of tomato paste, and salt into the pot, and let it simmer for a few hours.
I put the water bath canner on to boil, then went upstairs to put the kittens in the carrier, put them in the bathroom, and vacuumed the hell out of their room. I vacuumed it on Friday after two weeks of NOT vacuuming it, and I got up so much cat hair and dust and litter that I swore I’d never let it go that long again. Poor kittens, having to live in that filth. I mean, it wasn’t SO bad because I’d been getting the worst of it up with a hand vacuum, but a hand vacuum really can’t compare to a real vacuum.
I put the kittens back in their room (when they exited the carrier, they did the something’s-different-what’s-different-something’s-different slink around the room, and I left them alone, and went off and vacuumed the rest of the house.
I finished the vacuuming, saw that the water bath canner was pretty close to boiling, and put the applesauce on the stove to heat up. I ended up with one quart and one pint jar of applesauce, and given the cost of the apples, I’m thinking that applesauce from the store is cheaper. Also, less of a pain in the ass.
(I’m going to make apple crisp and vanilla frozen yogurt for dessert next weekend. That’s my favorite thing about Fall, the apple crisp.)
Once the applesauce was processing, I drained the cucumbers, etc for the sweet pickle relish, made that, and by the time the applesauce was done, the sweet pickle relish was made and in jars ready to be processed. Although the recipe told me I’d get about 8 half-pint jars of relish, I ended up with two pints of relish. How does that translate, I ask you?
With the pickle relish processing, I decided the spaghetti sauce was ready to go, so put the pressure canner on to boil, did some dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, and then put the spaghetti sauce in jars, took the pickle relish out of the canner to cool, put the spaghetti sauce in the pressure canner to process, sliced eggplant into slices, sprinkled them with salt, and put them in the colander to drain.
When the spaghetti sauce was done processing, I rinsed the eggplant off, breaded it, and put it in the oven to cook. When it was done, I let it cool off, bagged it up, and put it in the freezer.
I feel like I never stopped doing shit this weekend, but I look in the refrigerator, and I want to shoot myself. Sitting there glaring expectantly is a metric ton of jalapenos, habaneros, and green peppers, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do with the fucking things.
(Flickr)
(Flickr)
Next year, I am told, he wants to “experiment” with “different peppers” and “different kinds of salsa”, and to that I say: you go right ahead, motherfucker. HAVE FUN.
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“How about now? Is it time for the snuggle now?”
“NO.”