The Joy of Pickling

In June I attended a Colorado Wine Dinner, and I got to spend some time talking to Jake Norris, who makes Stranahan's Whiskey (www.stranahans.com). Jake is a big-time local food guy, and he's got quite the garden. I told Jake that I was interested in learning how to can and pickle food, and he told me to get a wonderful book called "The Joy of Pickling." I followed Jake's advice, and made my first attempts at food preserving.

I started with green beans....

Ta-da!!!!

Next came the lemon cucumbers. The garden this year didn't yield any regular cucumbers, but we had plenty of these pretty yellow ones.

Lots 'o good stuff in the jars.

Zucchini pickles with sweet Indian spices (ginger, corinader, cinnamon) and chiles.

Lemon cucmber, sweet Indian zucchini, and spicy zucchini/onion pickles.

Getting the tomatoes ready.

The tomatoes were very late to ripen this year, so we ended up with a lot of green tomatoes right before the first frost. Rather than giving up the fruits, I picked them to make canned green tomatoes.

Did I say that we had a lot of green tomatoes? Really, a LOT!!

Presenting.... Green tomato salsa, green tomato chutney, zucchini relish, and canned (mostly) green tomatoes.