10 sewing machines & a serger: Pickles and Relish and quilting the picnic blanket

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Pickles and Relish and quilting the picnic blanket

Despite fighting off a head cold or sinus thing I had a very productive day!

This morning when I harvested the garden I had almost 15lbs of cucumbers... Oh boy, that a lot of cucumbers. Never mind all the other delicious produce. I decided on making more pickles and trying some relish. I like relish but somehow when I buy it at the grocery store I can't help but wonder how many chemicals were used to make it that really bright and unnatural shade of green.

My pickle making process is getting much more efficient as it is now much easier to guesstimate the times in getting the water bath ready at the same time as the produce. Takes a little practice to get the timing right. So your not standing in the kitchen for hours and hours waiting for the darn giant pot of water to boil to process the jars.

This time I made 6 pints of dill garlic sandwich slicers. All of the dill came from my garden as well. I used 6 pounds of cucumbers sliced lengthwise, fresh garlic, dill heads a little red pepper flakes, peppercorns and cider vinegar. I can't wait to try these!

I also made relish. The relish took much more time because there is lots and lots of chopping and dicing. From 6 cucumbers (about 2.5 lbs) 2 yellow onions, 1 yellow pepper and 1 red pepper and 2 Serrano peppers along with lots of spices I yielded only 3 1/2 pint jars!

A small storm rolled through and both girls decided they needed to keep me company while I worked on my laptop for a bit.

Dorian spent the afternoon working on a model and kept me company while I worked in the kitchen.

And this evening I started the quilting on my picnic blanket. It is going much easier than I expected, the 1000 denier nylon fabric is slick on the outside so it slides nicely. The only problem is that it is one heavy sucker and a bit unwieldy. I had to keep switching shoulders as I sewed the channels because it is so heavy and a bit slippery that it was really resting on my upper arm as I fed it through the machine and I could feel my arm and neck tensing up after awhile.