Sweet Pickle Relish

Every year during the busy canning season I always manage to try a few new recipies. What I'm looking for is a canning recipe that becomes a family favourite or at the very least a tried and true recipe that I will use over and over. If I'm lucky I will discover one or two great recipes each year this way. If I'm not lucky I end up with a dud which is why I only do small test batches for new recipes.

Natural

I have a couple of tried and true recipes for sweet pickle relish so I really wanted to try the recipe in the Ball Blue Book to compare to those I know are good. I had serious reservations about the recipe when it said to 'chop' the cucumbers instead of the standard 'run them through the grinder' method but decided to go ahead. The recipe said nothing about seeding the cucumbers either. I made a half batch giving me a yield of 3 - 250 ml jars. Pictured is the sweet pickled relish cooking before any food colouring has been added.

Sweet Pickle Relish
source: Allrista Corporation, Ball Blue Book, 2001. Pp. 50
2 medium cucumbers
1 c chopped onions
½ c sweet green pepper
½ c sweet red pepper
2 tbsp salt
1¾ c sugar
½ tbsp celery seed
½ tbsp mustard seed
1 c cider vinegar

Chop cucumbers, onions and peppers. Combine in large bowl and sprinkle with salt. Cover with water. Let stand 2 hours. Drain, rinse and drain thoroughly. Combine remaining ingredients in large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Add drained vegetables. Simmer 10 minutes. Pack into hot jars leaving ¼-inch headspace. Wipe the rims. Adjust two piece lids. Process 10 minutes in boiling water bath canner.
Yield: 4 half pints.

Food Colour Added

I took one look at the relish and realized it needed food colouring. Now this is not something I like to add to any of my homecanned products but in this case it was necessary. What many don't realize is the relish you buy in the stores gets that lovely green from added food colouring that has first been injected into the cucumbers then added again during processing. That means duplicating this process at home is a bit more difficult.

The work around is to add a few drops of food colouring to make the homemade version look a bit more like the commercial version. I use an all natural vegetable food colouring for this type of application. Notice the difference in the colour!

Sweet Pickle Relish

This time of year it is quite common for me to put up two or more products the same day. On Friday I also made another batch of plum sauce. Pictured are 6 jars of plum sauce and 3 jars of the sweet pickle relish. If you have followed this blog you will have seen most pictures of home canned foods with the rings on as in the far left. Also pictured in the far left is the thin white film from water deposits that can occur on jars during canning. This can be prevented by adding white vinegar to the canner water or washing the jars down with white vinegar after canning. Once the rings are removed and the jars cleaned they are ready for storage (centre). Don't store the canned jars with rings on as this can hide false seals.

The far right shows the 3 jars of sweet pickle relish. There aren't many times I will really diss a recipe but this is one of them. I followed this recipe to the "T" shaking my head as I did. The fundamental step of seeding then grinding the cucumbers was left out giving a far less than satisfactory result. The recipe tastes good but it is certainly not what you would expect of a relish. There was no indication that food colouring should be added either so if you didn't know about doing that step visually you would have been a bit unhappy with the results. Overall I am disappointed in this recipe. Yes I have a product on my pantry shelf but it really isn't the 'relish' recipe I anticipated. I would suggest seeding the cucumber then grating or grinding them and definitely add a bit of green vegetable based food colouring!

Frugal Kitchens 101 - Using Your Pantry Stores

The past few Frugal Kitchens 101 have focused on stocking your pantry. This is the time of year when many of us are re-stocking the pantry with as much as a year's supply of fruits and vegetables to get us to the next growing season. At the same time we may be trying to use up some of last year's canning goods while taking advantage from the odd excellent sale. Continuing with the pantry theme this week's Frugal Kitchens 101 will discuss using your pantry stores.

The purpose of your pantry is to keep you prepared, keep you out of the grocery stores, greatly reduce eating out and is aimed at saving you money. One big mistake that some make is to continuously add to their pantry stores without using them. In extreme cases this is known as hoarding. What happens is the food doesn't get used within a 2 year period and quite often you hear about these cases when family or friends are forced to clean out a relative's home through illness or death. The sad thing is hundreds of dollars of stocked up food ends up being tossed if this happens. Don't get into this trap. Think of your pantry as constantly evolving to meet your current needs. Foods should constantly be revolving using the oldest foods first with no one food item being older that a year to 18 months old. Once your pantry is stocked it becomes a matter of constantly revolving the food. Armed with your pantry inventory list and personal use list you are now ready to use your pantry stores. Here are a few of my tips.

• plan to use - If you menu plan and even if you don't plan to use a certain portion of your pantry stocks each week. If you menu plan it is quite easy to know that you are going to use for example 2 jars (cans) of green beans, 2 packages of pasta, 2 tins of tuna as part of that particular week's menu plan. Obviously this is not a full menu but you get the idea. I am not a huge menu planner aside of special events and that is because when I walk into my pantry I'll spot something that ends up being the focus of that night's meal.
  
• use what you have - In general if you have stocked to allow for example 1 jar (can) of green beans per week you should be averaging that amount. Don't worry about restocking that particular item until you are down to the quarter mark. So if you started with 52 jars (cans) of green beans when you get down to 13 jars then start watching the sales if buying commercially canned green beans. If you are using home canned green beans this will be the time to assess whether or not you need to put up more jars the following year. If you are home canning and have reached the half year mark without reaching the halfway mark that is likely a good indication you could reduce the amount you put up the following year.
• be flexible - Your food preferences and consumption changes over time so that may result in you finding you having an excess of a particular pantry item. If you know this is an item you will not consume donate it to a food bank or give it to someone who will use it.
• be creative - Open your pantry and quickly pick one item. Use that item as the inspiration for that meal. It's surprising how effective this method can be. Use your pantry inventory list as the basis for planning your weekly menu as well.

Looking Back on the He Said/She Said Contest

The Cookbook of Choice

One of the easiest ways to discover new recipes is to pick a cookbook then go through it marking recipes that sound appealing to you. That's exactly what my husband and I did then to make it a bit more challenging we turned it into a contest identified here as He Said/She Said. Both of us are accomplished home style, cooking from scratch cooks so this became one more aspect of being able to share of love of food. At the same time we each learned something about each other's cooking style along with discovering a few new ingredients.

When I originally came up with the idea for this contest the premise was each would do 6 different recipes of their choosing without assuming any help from the other. Well that idea fell by the wayside with the very first recipe, Texas Style Barbecue Chicken. As we browsed through the recipes questions arose over certain ingredients so one of us would rush off to do an online search. The curiosity of what was happening in the kitchen quickly turned into me acting as hubby's sous-chef and he in turn acted as mine. In the end the entire contest became less of a competition and more of a team work effort. We seriously had a lot of fun with this so already have plans for our next joint venture in cooking coming soon so watch for that coming as October's feature.

He Said/She Said Contest Summary

For the past 6 weeks my husband and I had a contest with each of us making a recipe from Better Homes and Gardens® New Grilling Book to create a meal. The primary goals for this contest was to discover new recipes while learning a bit more about our cooking styles in a fun yet slightly competitive contest. In total there were 12 recipes, each choosing 6. The contest ended August 31 with all dishes completed by that date. Originally I was going to post one large poll so you the reader could vote for your favourite dish of the 12 recipes. Instead I will post one poll for the best of he said and one poll for the best of she said followed by a final polling with the first poll to go live tomorrow and running one week. Tomorrow's blog post will give some of the highlights we discovered from the contest.

The Cookbook of Choice

Here is a summary of the He Said/She Said recipes. Click any of the pictures to take you to the full write-up for the dish. If you try any of these dishes please let us know. Please leave comments on the individual posts or on this post if you wish. Happy voting!


He Said

She Said