Canned!

The thought of canning has always intimidated me, I don't know why but it did. I love to cook, I take on challenging recipes just to say, "yup I can do that", but I never wanted to attempt canning. I didn't grow up in a home where there was any canning done so it wasn't a skill that was passed along. Well with these Harvest Boxes I have been enjoying, I have gotten to the point where I have received things I knew my kids wouldn't necessarily eate in baked or grilled formats so I figured why not try my hand at this canning business. Sure I've done the Cucumber, Onion and Tomato Salad and put it in a big ol' Mason jar but who am I kidding, I only put it in there for the packaging, not because I actually went through the whole canning process.

Well yesterday I decided to take the plunge and do some canning. I had some beautiful peppers I wanted to do something with before they went bad and I would feel bad about wasting good food and good money, so I searched and searched for banana pepper recipes (since that was the type of pepper I had the most of) and came across this recipe for mustard/butter. I found this exact recipe on 3 different websites and it was called mustard on one and butter on the other. It was super easy to make and even easier to do the water bath (which was probably the part that was most intimidating to me). When I heard that glorious "ping" of the jars sealing, I could have cried, really it was that exhilarating! Anyway, now that I've canned for the first time I'm looking forward to canning other things...oh and the mustard is a hit in the family...all the boys look forward to dipping pretzels in it and covering their hot dogs with it!