A twofer and neither is a cucurbit.

July’s canning challenge is cucurbits (I didn’t know they were related either.) I stopped at fruit stands on the way back from Eastern Washington, and hit the Farmer’s Market yesterday, and due to our late, wet spring this year, they aren’t in season yet. So, I invoked this clause of the Can Jam challenge:

substitutes of food in focus is acceptable only if it really is not in season where you are and you would rather use a fruit or veggie that you can source locally. in this case, effort should be made, if possible, to choose a substitute that is closest to the focused food. and please, don't let this stop you! we're learning about canning here people! so can what you can!

When the cucumbers come into season, I am planning on pickling quite a few, and making more dill relish as I am almost out of last year’s batch. I also am collecting watermelon rinds to pickle this year (if you’d like to contribute, let me know and I’ll share the bounty)

As I mentioned earlier, I got local, organic raspberries earlier this week and canned raspberry jam at Dh’s request. I used the recipe from the pectin insert:


6 cups raspberries, crushed
8 ½ cups sugar
1 package pectin.

Crush raspberries and put into large saucepan. Bring raspberries and pectin to a boil. Once boiling, add sugar and return to a boil. Boil for four minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, skim foam, and ladle into hot jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace. Adjust two piece lids and process in a water bath canner. Makes 8 – ½ pint jars (mine made 9, actually)

Out of my Wednesday CSA box, I made Dilly Beans and Dilly Carrots.

I started with this dilly bean recipe from the Ball Blue Book:

2 lbs green beans
1/4 cup canning salt
2 1/2 cups vinegar* (I used apple cider vinegar)
2 1/2 cups water*
1 tsp cayenne pepper, divided
4 cloves garlic
4 heads dill

Trim ends off green beans. Combine salt, vinegar and water in large saucepot. Bring to a boil. Pack beans, lengthwise, into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Add 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, 1 clove garlic, and 1 dill head to each pint jar (add two cloves and ½ tsp cayenne per jar if doing quarts) Ladle hot liquid over beans, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two piece caps. Process 10 minutes in boiling water canner.

Makes 4 pints or 2 quarts.

Since I don’t have a kitchen scale (something I’d like to rectify soon), I just used the green beans out of my share box this week (apparently about one pound), and then peeled and cut carrots from my share to make up the balance.

My yield was one jar of straight dilly beans, one jar of mostly dilly beans with a few carrots in there, and two jars of dilly carrots. My Dh greatly enjoyed last year’s dilly beans and is looking forward to these, we’ll wait about 6-8 weeks before breaking into them to allow the flavors to marinate.

Enjoy!

*I ended up doing an emergency 1 cup water 1 cup vinegar addition to get the brine for the last jar, so the next time I make these, I'll bump the amount of each to 3 cups.