a pretty pickle

sliced thin, salted and about to be iced

At long last, I brave the true Bread and Butter Pickles (with onions!) from scratch, no cheater packet of spices.  Before breakfast, I sliced all 4lbs of them, with 2 lbs of red onions, and hit 'em up with salt and ice.  And there they sat, shedding excess water so they could make me up a crunchy little pickle.

rinsed and drained

add pickles to stuff I already boiled

It was a sticky but satisfying experience and I am the happy holder of 5 pints and 2 half pints of pickles.  And I still forgot to do the "let the air out" trick...one of these days, I'll remember that. At least these pickles are not floating!

Traditional Bread and Butter Pickles
The Ball Complete Book of Home Preservation

The branzini fish from the other night cooked up fabulously on the grill with some red onions and sliced lemon inside, salt and pepper and olive oil on the outside.  Nothing like the afternoon high Colorado winds to act as bellows for your charcoal grill.  The kids were not as impressed but that was ok as the fish itself did not yield as much filet as I'd have initially thought after my trout experiences.  The taste was somewhere between trout and mackerel, both of which are pictured below, losing their skin in my little Aussie grill.  All in all, I'd have it again.  The fact that the internet touts it as a "green fish" is just a bonus.  Thankfully, my fishmonger scales them all for me.

time in a bottle

With my friend's plane delayed due to weather everywhere in the country but where she was, I pulled out my newly purchased little cabbage and thin sliced it all to death, tossed it in a bowl with some kosher salt, and began squeezin'.  Before she even texted her plane was on the ground, I had it all souped up and stuck in a quart jar to ferment on my counter.  Behold! The Kraut!

Small-Batch Fresh Sauerkraut
Canning for a New Generation by Lianna Krissoff

The next day, there was much movie watching (Potter!) and frozen yogurt eating (Lulu's!) and such but at the end of the day, there were pretty things in jars once again.

Zesty Red Onion Jelly and Sparkling Hot Pepper Jelly

The leftovers that did not make the jar have not lasted long in the refrigerator either.  The pictures do not do these beautiful preserves justice!

My husband and children love hot pepper jelly on crackers, toast, spoons, fingers...so making that was a no-brainer.  I snagged the recipe from Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard's Small-Batch Preserving.  There are other recipes I want to try but when you fail to pick up the proper quantity of liquid pectin, you make what you can!  Zesty Red Onion Jelly, in this iteration, came from the trusty and reliable Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.