Knit n Things

I have some crazy memories of my mom canning a lot when I was young. It involved HUGE amounts of vegetables, an entire weekend, much back breaking work, and completely trashing your kitchen. Not my idea of fun.

Then I saw some yummy canning goodness happening over at OSOH. Canning, in a New York apartment? (Not that I've ever been in one - but I imagine the kitchens to be tiny.) I was intrigued and just had to try my hand at home canning so I ran out and bought this book.

I decided to try tomatillos and strawberries for my first try. It was an .... interesting experience. I have never handled a raw tomatillio... they smell kinda gross so I couldn't imagine them tasting yummy at all. They look pretty though.

I'm not really the kinda cook that measures things... usually I use recipes as a guide rather than a rule. That didn't really work out so well. I added too much lemon juice & it threw off the balance of the flavors. (Luckily it's still edible - even almost good)

I also didn't add enough stuff to the jars. Mom bugged out about there not being enough stuff to hold the seal properly. I was just stoked that I got a good seal to start with. That little pop was extremely exciting! (my life... so exhilarating!)

Next up were the strawberries. Sigh - I totally screwed those up. Again measuring bit me in the ass - I measured the sugar but not the strawberries - recipe said 8 cups of berries at about a pound and a half. I had 2 pounds I don't need to measure, except there's WAY to much sugar. It's suppose to be a strawberry balsamic jam - but I forgot the balsamic. It's way to loose. Not really a jam - more like a syrup. I tried it over ice cream last night - it's like candied strawberries. It's too sweet to eat. I was suppose to get 6 jars full - I only got 4 just think about how much extra sugar is in there.... yuck. So now I've got 4 jars of strawberry syrup - that I have no clue what to do with.

I must say though - I had fun... can't wait to try it again.

// posted by ~Jody @ 11:35 AM