Sweet Pepper Strips...

Recently a friend who was a guest in my home for a weekend shared two jars of home canned sweet pepper strips with me and my family. They were so delicious! Now I have a new idea of how to preserve the bumper crop of peppers we are harvesting from the garden!

Ever get a Subway veggie sub and they asked if you want to put sweet peppers on it? Now you can do it at home, without the preservatives and food coloring!

2 pounds sweet peppers, seeded and cut into 1/4 or 1/2 inch strips or ringspickling salt (leave this out if you do an ice brine)
2 t. salt
2 cups apple cider   vinegar
2 cups water
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 or 2 T pickling spice mix (I got mine at Penzey's)

Fill jars with pepper strips. Heat other ingredients until sugar is dissolved. Discard pickling spice before adding the sauce to the jars. If you want, you can add a few onion slices to each jar, and even a clove of garlic and/or a thin slice of fresh ginger root.

Fill jars with hot sauce up to neck. Wipe rims clean, top with a heated lid, a ring and do a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

I am so looking forward to having these on veggie and hummus wraps, or on sandwiches, or added to a garden salad. Yummy!

My Favorite Utensils...

Eating plant-strong sure requires a lot of chopping and dicing. For much of that, I often turn to my trusty Rada 'tomato slicer' knife. I use it to chop broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and mushrooms. It gets used to cut watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, strawberries, and pineapples.

I think it is safe to say that this knife gets used several times every day.

Then, there's my good old Kitchen Aid kitchen scissors. It's even pink! I use that scissors to cut lettuce and other greens for salads. We like our salad greens chopped fairly small and that scissors is a real time-saver for that task.

an onion from my garden in 2013

Then, there is the set of cutting mats I bought a few years ago that have served their purpose well! I use them for most of my chopping and dicing jobs. They not only help to keep my knives from dulling too quickly, but they protect my counter top as well.

Step out the Back Door...

...and snip a few HUGE leaves of kale for a green smoothie!

 

 

Yep, I give it a huge thumbs up!

 

Kickstart Your Health...Recipe

I have been silent for quite awhile lately and I apologize but I've been hosting several different sets of out-of-town guests and harvesting/preserving produce from my garden and have been kind of busy!

The other evening, we were hosting guests and I wanted to make an appealing, but plant-strong meal for us all. So here is what I came up with:

Black Beans and Pasta

 

Cook a 16 oz box of whole grain pasta

(mine was made from ancient grains; a 'salvage grocery store' find)

 

Drain and rinse.

 

Saute

2 medium to large onions, diced

1 large red or green bell pepper

2 cups diced brown mushrooms

(I often use baby bella mushrooms)

 

When veggies are soft, add 3 or 4 cloves garlic, pressed or minced

Toss and remove from heat.

 

Take a quart of black beans, add a quart of crushed tomatoes or

pasta sauce, and 1 rounded T taco seasoning mix. Stir well.

 

Toss all ingredients in a casserole dish.

Pour more pasta sauce over top, if needed or desired.

 

Sprinkle with a tiny bit of cheddar for flavor, optional.

Bake at 350* for about 1 hour or til heated through.

 

You can also freeze this casserole for a "convenience food"

on busy days.

 

Menu idea:

 

Black Beans and Pasta

Garden Salad

Green Beans

Melon Medley

(a mixture of cubed melons sprinkled with blueberries)

 

 



Taco Soup...

Convenience food.

We all like it, don't we?!

One of the things I try to always have on my shelf for fast grab on days when I'm doing school with my children, or busy gardening, or sewing is taco soup. This recipe came from my mother to me and then I tweeked it so much that now I call it mine. :-)

 

I do a 15 quart batch at a time and can it up, but if you don't want to do that, I have some notes for you at the end of this post. We enjoy ours with corn chips or rice and a sprinkling of cheddar.

 

God bless my Grandma for blessing me with this 20 qt stockpot

on my wedding day. It has seen many batches of

taco soup, ketchup and tomato juice.

 

 

 

I love the rich colors and thickness of this recipe.

It is comfort food on rainy days like today,

and on the snowy days of winter.

 

 

the recipe:

 

Into a large stockpot, place

3 large onions, diced (or 3 rounded T dried onions)

1 qt diced peppers

(my girls freeze them from my garden in summer)

3 qt whole kernel corn

3-4 lb ground beef or beef stew meat cubes, browned

6 qt beans

(I canned them last evening*; I use a combination; this time

it was 2 qu small red beans, 2 qu black beans and 2 qu pink beans)

6 qu crushed tomatoes or tomato juice

(sometimes I use a combination of these two)

5 rounded T taco seasoning

1 rounded T salt

1/2 T black pepper

1/2 c sugar

 

Heat through and then fill jars for canning.

Place lids and rings on jars.

 

 

 

Can pints at 15 lb pressure for 30 minutes.

Can quarts at 15 lb pressure for 40 minutes.

 

*I can my own beans because

1. it's much much more economical than buying them

2. it's easy and I can do other things while I wait for the canner to get finished

3. I know where my beans come from and what is in the jar.

More than I can say for most commercially processed beans.

Did you know most of them have sugar in them, among other things?!

4. I can reduce the amount of waste I send to the landfills!

 

To can, fill jars with

 1 1/3 c dried beans, 1 t salt (optional) 

fill with water to neck of jar.

 

Process at 15 lb pressure:

quarts = 50 minutes

pints=35 minutes

 

To make this soup recipe without canning, I figure the following as a rule of thumb

(the closest to a recipe you'll get from me!

My girls keep getting me to try and write my recipes down,

which is hard since I rarely use a recipe!)

 

For every qt of beans, use 1 qt tomato juice, 1/2 lb beef (optional),

2 c corn, 1 rounded T taco seasoning, 1 t salt, 1 onion, 1/2 c peppers,

1/2 t black pepper and a scant T sugar.

 

Simmer a good half hour and serve.