more from the kitchen

Well, I'm still playing in the kitchen. First I played around with 25 pounds of the biggest carrots I have ever seen. They weighed about a half-pound a piece and some were three inches in diameter. I figured they would be woody and tough but they were very tender and sweet. Five pounds went in the fridge for fresh carrots; ten pounds were sliced and dehydrated. Did you know that ten pounds of carrots dehydrates down to a half-gallon jar? Me neither! Then I pickled five pounds and made Copper Pennies with the last five pounds.

I liked the looks of the recipe for Spicy Pickled Carrots over at getrichslowly's blog the best. I used half the cloves because I'm not to fond of cloves. I also think she meant 2 1/2 tablespoons of crushed red pepper flakes and I put more fresh ginger in mine because I had it and like it. I only had three jalapenos, so I seeded and deveined to cut the heat, then I cut them into julienne strips. I though five tablespoons of pickling salt too much so I used a half of a teaspoon per jar.

Then I canned Copper Pennies. Copper Pennies is a marinated carrot salad from the late Forties or early Fifties, as I understand it. We had it for the first time in a little Mom-n-Pop's restaurant south n west of us 22 miles. We liked it so well; I came home and Googled the ingredients finding the name and a recipe. I wanted to can a few pints so all I had to do was stick a jar in the fridge, cool it and have a quick something to go with sandwiches.

I used the recipe from cooks.com. I switch out the tomato soup for 1-cup tomato sauce. Cut the sugar and oil in half. I only used 1/2 cup each of the green pepper and onion. I add a 1/2-cup of sliced celery because several recipes I looked at either had celery in them or celery seed. And another couple of things I did was mix the raw carrots and everything else in a big bowl and then ladled the mixture into my pint jars. I water-bath canned them for 25 minutes because of my altitude and starting with a raw pack.

I want to warn everybody that I do not have an approved method of canning this recipe. I did what seemed reasonable to me based on the acidity of the fluids I added to the marinade. If what I did makes you nervous then take the extra step; pressure can for the appropriate time and pressure.

Today I made Mango and Pineapple Jam; then I made Monkey Butter. The simplest recipe for Mango and Pineapple Jam was found on Food.com by Sharon123. And of course I changed it around a little bit. LOL Here's what I did to the recipe:

2 Cups ripe mangoes, cubed (I used 2 mangoes)
2 cups crushed pineapple (1 20-oz can, undrained)
2 TBSP lemon juice
3 cups sugar
2 TBSP rum (the addition of rum is from another recipe)
1/2 package of sure-jel (optional)

My mangoes were not dead ripe they were firm ripe. (They would have made a great salsa.) So I whizzed them in the food processor until they were finely chopped. Put the mangoes in a large saucepan and cooked for 5 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients, mix well and bring to a boil. Boil rapidly for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring often until thick. After 20 minutes the jam wasn't thick enough to suit me so I added a half package of sure-jel. Boiled for a couple more minutes and like what I was getting so I jarred it up and water-bath canned for 15 minutes.

Notes: You might want to mix in the pineapple, lemon juice and rum; then taste it before adding the sugar 1 cup at a time because I though it was too sweet. My next batch I will be cutting back on the sugar. A blog from the Philippines said that mango jams from the USA had too much sugar in them and I have to agree.

Then it was on to Monkey Butter. I was over at Kris Watson's blog, Simply Living, and she was writing about canning up something she called Monkey Butter. It caught my interest and Kris provided a link to follow back to the recipe. So I follow the link to Brook Hurst Stephens site, learntopreserve.com, and tried her recipe. I sort of followed her recipe. LOL I added about 2 TBSP of rum to the butter after I removed the pan from the heat. It’s all her fault she mentioned Pina Coladas. And I cooked it for 45 minutes because it wasn't as thick as I like butters. I ran the whole mixture through the food processor instead of messing around with a potato masher before cooking. I did wondered if I should have drained the canned pineapple chunks before mixing the pineapple into the bananas. I would also recommend tasting the mixture before adding all the sugar because once again I didn't think it needed to be that sweet.

Tomorrow I'm going to play with tomatoes. You have a good day!

Judy