Sometimes I'm a Nervous Nelly...

For those of you who know me well, this is no big surprise: I'm sometimes a Nervous Nelly.

 I'm mostly confident in myself and most of my abilities. But some things throw me for a loop, and I get all nervous.

Maybe it's because I'm afraid of failure? Not sure why; I've failed at stuff before and I've totally survived each failure. It's just an icky feeling and I hate it.

But I digress.

Here's the story:

My mom had an over-abundance of tomatoes in her garden this year, and she ended up making a rather tasty homemade sweet and sour sauce, and then bottled it. Two batches.

When I went to visit my family in Utah the first weekend of the month, Mom still had an over-abundance of tomatoes, and Momma gave me lots of them so I could make (and bottle) my own sweet and sour sauce. (Yay! Hooray!)

Last Friday, I holed up at home and hunkered down the kitchen (after running a million errands that morning), and I got to work!

Now, dear readers, I don't want you to think that COOKING turns me into a Nervous Nelly. I rather enjoy cooking. The part that made me  most nervous about this whole...process (and it was quite the process) was the canning/bottling part.

I'm pretty sure I remember "helping" my mom can food in the days of my youth, but I feel pretty confident that Ma did the bottling portion. Oh, come on, self, let's just be honest: Mom did most of the work. I was mostly there to keep her company, occasionally squishing the fruit for jams, or helping to wash various fruits or vegetables, or to (maybe) get in the way.

The fact is, I'm a 30 year old Mormon woman who has never really bottled anything.

This is a perfect example of one thing that turns me into a Nervous Nelly: doing something all by myself without someone around to look over my shoulder and guide me through the process. (It's a wonder I survived--and graduated--my Master's program at USU, huh?)

What if, after the long process of peeling tomatoes, cutting vegetables, doing everything my recipe told me to do...what if I ruined the bottling procedure, and I was left with 14 bottles of (hopefully delicious) sweet and sour sauce that ought to be eaten within the next week or so before it went bad? OR! (My brain rarely shuts off with just one "what if," so you know.) Or what if I actually followed the recipe wrong and my sweet and sour sauce wasn't actually as delicious as I knew my mother's was? OR! What if (even worse!), I made a nasty sauce AND the bottling process went awry?! Surely, my inner demon would mark me as a rotten homemaker altogether and I'd die inside just a little bit.

Y'all are probably glad you weren't in the kitchen with me last Friday.

I got busy boiling water to pour over my sinkful of tomatoes, peeling my sinkful to tomatoes, realizing I had too many tomatoes to do just half a batch and running to the store to buy more bottles, chopping up onions and bell peppers...it was a long process, but one I enjoyed up until I had added my final ingredients and the sauce was thickening on the stove top.

peeling tomatoes, even after trying to boil their skins off, isn't exactly "fun"

these bad boys were POTENT...
maybe i should invest in goggles?

nom, nom, nom!

i think this was after i added the "sour" portion
(meaning soy sauce and vinegar)

the "sweet" part:
pineapple juice and sugar!

LOTS of questions came to my mind. Questions like:

*Do I need to wash my brand new bottles before I fill them with sauce?
*When do I start timing the 35 minute hot-bath?
*How long do I put the lids in hot water before I put them on top of my bottles?
*Only 7 bottles fit in my hot-bath pot at once; what the what do I do with the other seven bottles just waiting to be filled? Do I fill them all at once? Do I top them all with warm lids and rings and hope for the best? The bottles need to be completely submerged for their hot bath, right?
*Plus some other questions.

as it turns out, you should clean out your new bottles before using them
(thanks for the advice, Ma!)

Naturally, I called my mom. She's a stellar homemaker, and she's got this "bottling" thing in the bag. *Sooooo grateful my mom has a cell phone! And sooooo grateful that I didn't actually start making the sauce until late enough in the day that my mom was available to take my calls.

Because, of course these questions only occurred to me one at a time.

My poor, dear, sweet mother. I called her, I think, four times. Maybe five...

35 minute hot bath

Anyway. As nervous as I was (and I was nervous!), it was actually kind of fun. And now I kind of understand the bottling process. I feel quite confident that I will bottle stuff again in the future.

the final product: all 14 of them sealed!!!

I also feel quite confident that I'll be calling my mom the next time I bottle...anything.

And now...the recipe:

SWEEET & SOUR SAUCE

Anita Thurston

10-12 cups peeled and chopped tomato

4 cups chopped onion

4 cups chopped bell pepper

---cook down until tender (about 15 minutes)---

5 cups sugar

8 tablespoons soy sauce

3 cups white vinegar

---stir and cook---

In a blender:

drain two 20 oz pineapple tidbits

blend to juice:

juice of pineapple

1/2 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 cup "ultraset" or "clear jel A"

---Add to hot mixture and cook until hot and thickened---

Add the pineapple tidbits

Stir and pour into pint jars

Hot-bath for 35 minutes

1 batch makes 14 pints

Enjoy! 

And don't let it turn you into a Nervous Nelly!!!

YUM!

I've had a handful of requests for the recipe of the chocolate cinnamon cookies that I mentioned in my last post. I'm happy to oblige, of course. (It's my favorite cookie because it combines two most delicious ingredients: cinnamon & chocolate. Yummmmm!)

Behold:

Chewy Chocolate Cinnamon Cookies

Ingredients

6 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
3 tablespoons plus 1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

1 Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly spray cookie sheet with nonstick cooking spray or line with parchment paper.

2 Beat butter until creamy. Add brown sugar and 3 tablespoons granulated sugar; beat until blended. Add egg, baking soda, corn syrup and vanilla; beat well.

3 Stir together flour and cocoa; beat into butter mixture. If batter becomes too stiff, use wooden spoon to stir in remaining flour. Cover; refrigerate about 30 minutes, if necessary, until batter is firm enough to shape. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Combine 1/4 cup granulated sugar and cinnamon; roll balls in mixture. Place balls 2-inches apart on prepared cookie sheet.

4 Bake 9 to 10 minutes or until cookies are set and tops are cracked. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack or slide parchment paper and cookies to wire rack. Cool completely; peel cookies from paper. 40 cookies.

I always double the recipe. ALWAYS.

I got this amazing recipe from my dear friend, Jamie G. She got it from Hershey's.

You're welcome.

the recipe...

I have heard your cries...

A handful of you have asked for the apple pie recipe. So instead of responding individually, I'm going to please the masses in one post. You can thank me later. :)

AWESOME APPLE PIE:
-6 cups apples, peeled and thinly sliced (takes about 6 medium-large apples. My favorite combination is 4 Fuji and 2 Granny Smith)
-1 T lemon juice (I usually use closer to 2 T though...)
-1 c sugar (no more, no less)
-3 T flour
-1 T cinnamon (that's what the recipe calls for, but I usually eyeball it. Just enough so that each apple has a hint of cinnamony-ness)

-Mix all the deliciousness with your hands to spread the dry ingredients evenly over the juicy apples

-Fill your bottom crust with the aforementioned goodness; top with pastry dough and bake at 375 degrees for 45-50 minutes. DON'T forget to put aluminum foil around the edge of your pie, so as to avoid burnage. (I usually put the foil on for 35 min and then take it off for the remainder of the baking time.)

And just in case you don't have a great pie crust recipe, here goes...

SCRUMTRULESCENT PIE CRUST:
-1 c shortening
-2 c flour
-dash of salt

-Use a pastry cutter to combine the ingredients. (Seriously, use a pastry cutter, not a fork. I used a fork until last Christmas when my other dynamite roommate, Brooke, gave me a pastry cutter. The pastry cutter makes a huge difference!) When the ingredients are combined and the crumbs are done, they are roughly the size of peas. Then add:

-5-7 T cool water. (My crust always turns out better when I use 7 T; it may feel a bit wet, but at least it sticks together when you have to move it to the pie plate. You can add flour as necessary when rolling it out.)

-Use pastry cutter again to incorporate the ingredients. Divide the dough in half and add extra flour as necessary. Flour the counter top and rolling pin and...you know what to do from here. Just try not to handle the dough too much with your hands once you've added the water or else the crust gets tough rather than flaky. Tasty with any fruit pie.

-2 T melted butter to spread over the top crust, then dust with cinnamon sugar

-Don't forget to poke holes on the top crust (aesthetically-pleasing designs make for a pretty pie)

BON APPETIT!

They've gotten prettier with practice...
This pic was in my May 2008 file, so I must've made it in May.
And it was delicious.