Not something that always goes together, but today my mind is on the rising sun and the advent of pepper jelly into my canning arsenal. Both meet at the place where my soul gets happy.
First, the sun. Around these parts, it’s mid-fall and in mid-fall, one cannot rule out the chance of snow. Once, my mom and I drove home from my sister’s house in a blinding snow storm on this exact day. One October day, the city of Buffalo also got hit with a huge snowstorm and lost a lot of its trees and power was out for days. Today’s forecast? Sunny and high-60s, perhaps 70 degrees. Not too shabby for mid-fall.
We have had, honestly, fantastic fall weather. While it doesn’t do much for leaf viewing – an early hard frost turns the trees brilliant colors all at the same time – it does wonders for my psyche. Even though I am looking forward to enjoying the holidays and even I love a little snow at Christmas, the lack of snow right now is just okie-dokie-smokie with me. And I have found that sunshine and Halloween are a pretty heady combination.
When we were kids, it was not uncommon for one to be required to wear boots, hats, gloves and a winter coat to do trick-or-treating. Genuinely, that was cause for some childhood unhappiness. I mean, who is gonna see your costume under all that accoutrement? The only thing that got me to agree to dressing appropriately was the threat that if I didn’t, I would also not be allowed out of the house to trick-or-treat. Today, knowing that I can get out for a walk in the sunshine this afternoon in shorts and a t-shirt is enough to make me all sorts of happy.
And that leads to the pepper jelly. (Nice segue, huh?) This year’s garden bonanza has created opportunity. And by opportunity, what I really mean is that the garden overproduction led to the freezer getting overly full which meant that late producers had to be preserved in another manner to make sure they didn’t go bad. So, what does one do when their banana peppers turn out too mild and their jalapenos won’t stop growing? Why, it’s only logical. Make pepper jelly, of course.
Now, I’ve only had pepper jelly a couple of times but as I was trying to figure out what to do with these babies, the jelly popped into my mind. There is nothing more spectacular than a cracker with a little cream cheese topped with pepper jelly. It was like Mother Nature was giving me explicit directions to solve my overabundance.
So, once again, I broke out my new canning books and my water bath and began to make pepper jelly. As I was flipping through options on the internet, I came across an article where a columnist wrote that when he had encountered pepper jelly for the first time, his first thought was that only southerners could make jam out of peppers and that it was proof that they would preserve anything. Not realizing that pepper jelly had southern roots, I dug a little deeper and indeed, there it was. This was a manifestation of needing to preserve extra peppers in the south. Well, that just about sealed it. I could make pepper jelly, add a southern tradition to my basement pantry and enjoy all that goodness as another garden treat for the year.
I made the jelly. The fact is, had it not been such a hot summer followed by a warm fall, the pepper jelly would not have happened. The pepper plants would have died early and their yield would have been much lower. Yet, here I stood with six pints of pepper jelly ready to be water bathed and put on the shelf for some winter enjoyment.
This year’s garden just continues to produce. Right now, even though my freezer is in “withdrawal only” mode, the garden still has more peppers, tomatoes, beets, celery and sweet potatoes to harvest. This weekend, I’ll crank out the majority of the canned beets for another year’s harvest and storage. We also need to dig up our sweet potatoes and get them into dry storage. As for the celery and tomatoes? Well, if they can go another week or so, I can potentially make room in the freezer although eventually a turkey needs to find its way into the freezer as well.
All in all, however, it has been a fabulous canning season. This year, I completely branched out making two types of salsa, ketchup, bourbon-soaked peaches, banana pepper and jalapeno rings and now pepper jelly. That’s on top of marinara, pickles and peach jam. It is hugely satisfying to know that what we grew we either used immediately or we preserved for future use. And straight up, there is no greater sense of accomplishment than actually having provided for oneself. Outside of the items mentioned above, we also grew three types of beans, garlic, onions, regular potatoes, carrots, green and red peppers, dill, oregano, basil and thyme.
As the season winds down and the sun rises later and later, it’s a long slow goodnight to this year’s garden. We have done well. And like the sunshine streaming through the window, that makes me happy.
The Yuppie Homesteader 