Pickled Beans

This summer I grew a few pots of vegetables outside my door. A small garden with green, yellow and purple beans, 3 kinds of tomatoes, peppers, red, yellow and purple potatoes and some swiss chard and a variety of onions. I like container garden mostly because I don't have a lot of time for weeding. The biggest challenge to pot gardening is keeping up with watering especially in very hot weather. We did have a lot of hot weather this summer but fortunately we also had a lot of rain.

So, I decided to do something different with the beans. Other years I have frozen them or made mustard beans. This year I decided to make pickled or dilled beans.

I processed them the same as I would dill pickles:

1. Wash the jars and put them in a 200 degree oven for 20 minutes to sterilize them.

2. Wash and top and tail the beans.

3. Make the brine with 1 quart vinegar to 2 quarts water and 3/4 cup of pickling salt.

 4. For this recipe I added an 1/8 teaspoon celery seed and 1 large teaspoon of pickling spice to each 500 ml (pint) jar. I did not have garlic for the first batch but got some for the second batch.

5. When the jars were sterile I took them one at a time from the oven and put 1 dill head and 1 garlic clove per jar then filled them with an assortment of the colored beans then filled the jars with the hot brine leaving 1/2 inch of head space.
6. Wipe the rims and put the sterile (in a pot of simmering water) lids on the jar and finger tighten the rings.

7. Water bath for 15 minutes if you prefer although I do not usually do this for brined foodstuffs. As the jars begin to cool you should hear each lid pop. This indicates a good seal and if you check the appearance of the lid it should be concave (slightly indented). If they have not sealed you will need to reprocess them.

Note: Most government recommendations in both Canada and USA advise pressure canning everything.

Brandied Cherries

A couple of weeks ago I made for the first time, Brandied Cherries. Pretty simple really. Cherries, sugar and brandy. The brandy was acquired at duty-free during a hockey trip to the USA and the cherries purchased at a good price at the local town grocery store. I washed the cherries well. Who knows whats on them these days? Then, did the usual things for sterilizing canning jars. Next, put the cherries, sugar and brandy into the jars, wiped and sealed them. Then into the  water bath. I did this even though recipes said that process was unnecessary due to the brandy but I wanted to be certain.
I am very much looking forward to trying them sometime around Christmas although they should be ready before that. I will take some pics of them in the next couple of days and post them here.