Preserves

Top shelf full!

This weekend I spent some time by the stove working with surplus produce.  I got 5lbs of little garden cucumbers from a colleague, so I made bread and butter pickles.  This was my first time making cucumber pickles, although I have pickled beets a lot. I didn’t have any celery seed, but the pickles taste good and are crunchier than commercial ones.

Degorging little cucumbers and onions

I also picked some rowan berries to finally make rönnbär jelly as described by Per when I was in Sweden.  The berries are tart and bitter as all-get out, with a LOT of pectin.  I have not made jelly before and I heard it can be tricky to get it to gel properly, but no worries here.  Bill Cosby could make jello jigglers out of this stuff.

The Rowan berries right after picking. Despite several days of frost, they weren’t very red