my mom's delicious marinated veggies!

a couple of months ago my friend sarah and i had lunch and a canned food trade and i gave her one of my jars of my marinated veggies i made from my moms delicious recipe.  yesterday she decided to dive into the jar and apparently loved it and wanted the recipe.  

so here it is!!

my mom's delicious marinated veggies

the marinade:

• 1 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 cup oil (i used safflower)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 1/2 tablespoon garlic salt

the veggies:

corn, tomato, cucumber, red and green peppers, olives, onion, broccoli, carrot, really whatever veggies you want.

so basically, i just used as many veggies as i wanted and made enough of the marinade to cover the veggies.  you chop all the veggies up as small (or large) as you want and put into a container, cover with the marinade and refrigerate for one week.

after the week is up, take them out of the fridge and can them using a simple canning type.  i boil my jars for 15 minutes, the lids for 5, fill them with the food, put the lids on and boil for 10 minutes.  done.  so simple.  

here is the book i use for my canning, it's super simple to read and follow the instructions: small batch preserving.  i think it's a great book and there are fantastic recipes in there.  like the recipe for raspberry grapefruit honey jelly that i make except i use blackberries instead of raspberries.  there's also pickled ginger in there.  i really need to make that.  i loooooooove pickled ginger. mmmmmmm.......

canning trade...

a couple of weekends ago i got together with my friend sarah, who used to be my manager back in the day at barnes and noble.  sarah is awesome!  she's a totally fun girl who is into canning and cooking!  she also has her own blog, which she is much better keeping up with than i am with mine!

but i hadn't seen sarah in over 10 years since i quit b&n.  we've been friends on the facebooks and have kept in touch and we both thought that having a canning trade was a good way to get together for lunch, catch up and TRADE FOOD WE HAVE CANNED!  i just started canning this year, so i didn't have much of a selection to give her so i gave her 2 jars of marinated veggies (they're small jars!), a jar of blueberry jam and a jar of grapefruit blackberry honey jelly.

we both showed up at blue c sushi with gift bags of jars!

she gave me pear butter, rhubarb ginger jam and peach rosemary jam.

i had a great time at lunch and found out that sarah and i have lots more in common than i thought.  we'll be organizing a game night to get together and start learning how to play mah-jongg!  i'm so excited!  and about once a year i go to eat sushi at blue c.  i think it's such a funny way place to eat sushi.  it's one of those conveyor belt sushi places.

i decided i wanted to try the peach rosemary jam with some veggies on pork, so i baked the chops with the jam and sweet onions and tomatoes and put it on rice.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!  

sarah...you totally have to try your jam with some kind of meat.  it was such a good combination of sweet and savory!  you did a great job on the jam...i'm gonna have to make some next year!

i'm really looking forward to hanging out with sarah again for some photography or games!  YAY!  let winter begin!!

i got shit done...

it was the ging's birthday last wednesday, so i started late and made her a stuffed rabbit this last weekend. 

and LOOKIT them ears! sooooo cute!:

it's all finished!

this was my first attempt at making the rabbit and i got his little ears too far back on his head, so next time i'll put them up further.  he's still stupid cute though.  

then on monday after work i went over to top pot, where she works, and gave her her prezzie.  ginger loooved her new rabbit!  i'm always so happy when i make someone something they REALLY love!

she works at the original top pot, which is downtown.  we have one 5 blocks from our house, but the one downtown is the neatest.

then on my way home i realized that i haven't had quiche since we moved from the last house, which is almost exactly one year ago!  so i made quiche for dinner tonight.  broccoli, onion, cheddar and parmesan.

it's about to go into the ovens:

it's really too bad that alistair eats so differently from me, because this quiche was GOOD!

aaaaand i'm gonna have it for lunchie-poo tomorrow!

and the last thing for today is i had a custom order for 3 camera straps and whipped those out tonight while i was in between dinner and whatnot:

they're for a girl in california, sarah, who is a photographer and has already bought quite a few straps from me.  she has a couple websites of her own:

http://www.sarahlawphotography.com/

http://www.elliegracephotography.com/

and i'm really liking the lace i put on this one:

i had just enough of it to make her strap.  gold and white. mmmmmm.....