I was undecided on how to start this blog post. Either….
You know you’re old when…. when you and your husband stay home on a Friday night and can.
OR
10 lbs of fresh green bean = $25
23 qt pressure canner = $85
You and your husband staying in on a Friday night to can = LAME!
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YES I said CAN!! To fully understand how Ichiro and I ended up on a Friday night at 11pm waiting for the pressure canner to lose pressure we need to go back a few weeks. It all started the weekend I travel to Chicago with my family. Second thought, we need to go back a little more, let say to my childhood.
So my mom use to can, I remember her canning tomatoes, bread n’ butter pickles and most importantly DILLY BEANS!!! I don’t know when she stopped making these magical beans but at some point my mom put away her canning supplies and that was the end of the Dilly Beans.
Now fast forward to last month, when I traveled to Chicago for my aunt and uncle’s 65 birthday party. The party was over and we were hanging out at my aunt and uncle’s house, the after party, if you will. As I passed through the kitchen, I happened to glance down at the counter and I stopped right in my tracks. I saw the most beautiful thing ever, 1 qt size jar filled with DILLY BEANS!! I was practically shaking!! I screamed with excitement! Who knew she never stopped making them! Anyway she sent me back to Boston with the recipe and 1 jar of the yummy beans!!! I thought about hiding them from Ichiro, (come on, we all know how he gets at night!) but I was a good wife and said he could eat them with me!!
So we knew we had to get making them fast. This one jar was NOT going to last very long and it take a couple of months for them to ferment. We attempted to do it last weekend but Ichiro didn’t want me to kill anyone so he made me order a pressure canner.
Tonight after putting Noby to bed, Ichiro and I started working on the beans. What an exciting Friday night, canning Dilly Beans! haha Now they look nothing like my aunts. I was a little disappointed. But you never know, maybe they will taste right when we open them. I think this is going to be a trial and error type of things. I obviously didn’t fill the jars with enough beans. Who knows if I added enough dill in them. We are just going to have to wait and see!
Cut and cleaning 10 lbs of beans…
fresh garlic…
fresh dill…
cleaning the jars…
each jar got some dill, garlic and a slice of jalapeno…
Next the jars were filled with beans…
next we poured in a boiling mixture of water, vinegar and salt…
the top was placed on top…
next the jars are put in the pressure canner…
the cover is added and we wait and wait till the pressure reaches the right temperature…
Then we let the canner cool, when all the pressure is released we can open the canner and take out the EXTREMELY hot jars…
Now we just wait 2 months to see how they taste…tick tock, tick tock…