More Catching Up

Last of the garden harvest was these onions. It was fun digging for them, like having an Easter egg hunt. ;)

They didn't get as big as 'normal' onions you'd get in the supermarket, did they? But I decided I honestly liked the small sizes. Sometimes onions give me digestive problems, especially if I eat a lot of them, or if I eat more than one one raw ring on a hamburger. Which is a shame, because I love the taste and smell of onions, if I could, I'd be eating them raw on subs and slicing them for my salads, putting handfuls in my soup, etc. But anyway, these little onions were just perfect for me. I could add one small onion to a skillet or casserole and then I didn't have a lot of raw onion left over stinking up the fridge and getting dried out. I gave half of them to my neighbors, and stuck the other half in the fridge.

And I'm only a bit late on revealing another quilt I did for Quiltmaker magazine. I have always wanted to try a gradient, and with Diane Harris' generous stash enhancement of some BEAUTIFUL blue batiks, I planned this in EQ:

There's everything in this quilt, a huge variety of blues. Some of them were used in my mom's blue and beige quilt, s couple of the batiks in the Linkin' Logs quilt, some of them calicoes I'd had in my stash forever. You can read more about the fabrics and design process on Quiltmaker Magazine's blog, Diane Harris did another super writeup about it. Here's a closeup of some of the fabrics I used:

And here's what the actual quilt came out as. I realized it wasn't going to be bed-sized unless I added another border after the flying geese, so I came up with the tumbler gradient idea. I love the tumbler die I got from accuquilt, the small 3 inch size. It was a great way to have a scrappy but cohesive border.

Before I used the tumblers as a border, I had to see how they went together and how long a section of 2 of them was, or ten units in a row, so I could plan how many to cut. They went together so well it was almost goof-proof. Having the dog ears cut off the corners really helps the accuracy! So before I knew it, I had this many on my design wall:

And here it is with a final border of tumblers on it - almost looks like stained glass with all the different colors being backlit by the light from the window, doesn't it?

Banana Pepper Pickles

Here's my very first try at home canning/pickling.


The first little jar is banana pepper rings only.
The second and third jars are a combo of sweet banana peppers, garlic and Vidalia onion slices.
The fourth jar is like 2 and 3 but with red onion slices added. The red onion was HUGE, and much stronger than the mild Vidalia onion. I cried when I was slicing the red onion. :(

And that's NOT dirt or bugs in there, it's allspice berries, a peppercorn or two, and dill seed. In all my googling for recipes, most of the instructions mentioned that you shouldn't use powdered spices when canning, so that's why I added the whole berry and seed. Next time, I might make a little cloth bag and take all the spices out before I fill the jars. ;)

The first four jars have just a pinch of something called "Pickle Crisp" added, that's supposed to keep them crunchy.

The last jar, on the right, is mixed red and Vidalia onions with a slice or two of garlic clove, but no banana pepper. Instead of packing the veggies tightly in the jars raw, like I did the first four, I put all the onions I had left in the hot vinegar/salt/spice/sugar mix and brought it back up to a simmer, cooked them for a couple of minutes. Then I packed the hot rings in the jar. I poured in juice to almost fill the jar, and had enough left to fill the jar behind the small one, but it's pink from the red onion. This last jar didn't get any "Pickle Crisp" since I figured they'd be soft from cooking anyway. I was hoping also that the short cook time would make that red onion a little less strong.

I haven't tasted them yet - I'm going to wait a day before I try them, let the raw veggies soak up the vinegar and spices. It was less trouble than I thought it'd be, once I'd bought everything I needed, so I'll definitely do it again if they taste good.

These jars actually all sealed just from the boiling vinegar being poured over the veggies, all of the tops are locked down. I'm still going to play it safe and keep them in the fridge, though, because I didn't use a hot water bath on them.