Food In Jars

This has been a full week already of canning, the busy time is definitely upon us. I was looking through the Complete Book of Home Preserving to find a pickle recipe and instead stumbled up a recipe for Thai Hot & Sweet Dipping Sauce.

I made the recipe according to the directions and the results were OK, but could be so much better with some tweaking. I added orange juice concentrate and some ginger & horseradish and now it is superb! The kitchen smelled like a Chinese restaurant.  :)
Here is my version which I guess we'll call Spicy Orange Sauce:
3/4 cup minced garlic
1T salt
6 cups cider vinegar
6 cups sugar
a heaping 1/4 cup of hot pepper flakes
2T shredded ginger
2T prepared horseradish
2 12 ounce cans of orange juice concentrate (don't reconstitute)

Cook all together until sugar is dissolved, leave 1/2" headspace, can for 15 minutes. I added a jar to some chicken and threw it in the crockpot and then thickened the sauce after it was fully cooked. Mmm!

Next we made 2 batches of canned coleslaw. I actually think this tastes more like eggroll filling, but whatever, the children love it!
Combine: 3 cups vinegar
4 cups sugar
1t celery seed
1t mustard seed
4t salt and heat until sugar is dissolved. Let cool

In a big mixing bowl shred 1 lg head of cabbage (I prefer 1 small green & 1 small red)
1 cup shredded celery (or you can dice it)
1/2 cup shredded/diced onion
2 cups shredded carrots
Mix together and fill jars, don't pack them but don't underfill either, leave an inch headspace. Top with vinegar mixture, leave 1/2" headspace, remove bubbles & can for 10 minutes.

Lastly, I made a batch of blueberry jam with homemade pectin. I'll quickly cover how to make your own pectin. Take 5 Granny Smith apples and 2 lemons (for blueberry jam substitute 1 lime), quarter them but don't peel, place in pot with as little water as you can use to keep them from scorching. Cook until soft and run through Victorio Strainer. Add puree to your fruit & sugar and cook until done. The benefit of jam prepared this way, other than that it doesn't use nasty commercial pectin, is that should the jars come unsealed the jam won't mold. Sugar acts as a preservative. I know some people that don't even waterbath their jars, but I do for 10 minutes. Don't forget to add some vinegar to your canner to keep the white sediment off the jars!