Summer Veggies

I got the snap beans put up today and wound up with 5 more quarts of them. This time I managed to keep the pressure cooker close to 10 pounds of pressure most of the cooking time. It went over a little here and there but for the most part stayed close to 10 pounds. I am letting it cool now so I can take them out and maybe I will do that right this time. The other day I took the pressure off too fast and lost most all my water in one jar and it went wayyyy down in another one. Haven’t used this canner but twice now so I am still learning how to use it.

Went this evening and gathered a couple gallons of green tomatoes from my sister in laws garden. WOW does she have a garden!!!! ONE HUNDRED tomato plants and they are loaded to the hilt in tomatoes. Going to tell her, hey sis, when you get tired of them, just let me know and I will come get em. ;) SO I might need more jars if she does call me. lol

Anyway got the green tomatoes shredded up, DH cut up the onions and bell pepper for me. I chopped up the peppers and tossed in the salt to soak until morning. Then I will do what ever is next. Got this recipe from my sister in law and all I know is to let it soak over night. I know you add sugar and vinegar to it but don’t know how much or what else to do. Her recipe called for 2 gallons of the green tomatoes so that’s the one I used but didn’t finish writing it all down. I will call her in the morning and get the rest of the instructions. lol I have several more green tomatoes left over. We were guessing at 2 gallons and over guessed by a few. So I was thinking, hmmmm fried green tomatoes? lol I gave my chopper shredder machine away because it made too much noise and I didn’t use it much. Man I sure wished I’d had it with shredding those tomatoes. I shredded them with one of those old hand held metal shredders and was so afraid I was going to get my fingers in the shredder. After about 4 tomatoes I noticed my hand turning blood red and thought oh noooo I am allergic to these things! So I washed my hands with soap and water and dried them and put on some rubber gloves. I guess it was the acid in them doing that to my hands but man they were itching!!!! It was pretty hard to use the gloves to shred them because the fingers on the gloves were too long. lol I was so afraid I was going to have bits of yellow in my relish. ;)  But we got it done and it’s all soaking now in it’s salt. I am going to use Stevia sweetener in this batch instead of Splenda. One recipe I have that has way less tomatoes calls for 6 cups sugar! I can’t do that because I’m a diabetic and that’s just too much sugar!!!

Now when I get done with the Green Tomato Relish I plan on canning some Chow Chow. Found some VERY PRETTY bell peppers today at Save Rite for .88. They are twice the size they normally are so needless to say I didn’t have to buy lots of them. I think the green tomato relish called for 4 and we only used 2 because they were soooo huge. Then I believe the chow chow calls for 2 cups.

Got the green tomato relish canned (June 16th)today. Got 8 pints of them.

I sure wish I could get my hands on those 3.00 off coupons for the Ball canning jars. If I get any tomatoes I am going to need more jars. The coupon was back in April but good until Oct. 10th I believe it was. I was reading on the Harvest forum  there at the garden web and found out about it. You buy 2 boxes of Ball jars and you get 3.00 off. I would stock up on them this year! lol

EDITED to add..... got me some of the 3.00 off coupons!!! For you folks needing some coupons, check Ebay, search for Ball canning coupons. I got mine for 2.19 for 10 of them and that was with S&H on the buy it now option. You have to buy 2 boxes of the jars to use the 3.00 coupon but hey, if you gotta do it anyway, save 3 plus dollars. The coupon expires the 10th month so I have time to buy plenty between now and then. And man IF someone would put them on sale, we could even save more! ;)

Also edited to add this that happened to me while doing that green tomato relish! I used one of those metal screen mesh balls to put all my seasonings in and boiled them in it because I didn't want all that in my relish. Was going to toss it when I was finished cooking it. Well I grabbed my string I had tied to it to pull it out and all I got was the chain and the hook thing that closed the ball. The little metal thing that held the latch on, CAME OFF IN MY RELISH! UGHHHH I used the magnet that I use to get the lids out with and tried to find it with that but needless to say, I couldn't find it. Will have to be careful when we eat them and not eat that thing. Wont be able to give any of those to anybody either. Can you beleive that?