Eating and Preserving from the Garden

The squash and cucumbers are doing awesome this year!

This was what I picked Sunday morning from our garden.  TH and I decided to make pickles Sunday afternoon and had a good time working on it together.

We made some dill pickles and bread and butter pickles.  We did have a few learning opportunities throughout the process.  I learned to always check the acidity of your vinegar before beginning to can.  I had some generic white vinegar on hand and it was only 4% acidity.  For home canning, your vinegar needs to be at 5%.  We had one jar that cooled off too much before we added it to the simmering water bath canner to process and it burst the bottom out of the jar.  I also tried writing on the hot jars with a crayon as they came out of the canner.  It worked great!  I had heard of this method of marking your jars but hadn't tried it until yesterday.  

Tonight I'll be making a stir-fry with lots of squash and zucchini.  We are loving having all this fresh produce!