I haven’t been to St Jacob’s Market since last October, and I may have over done it. It’s just difficult to resist so much fresh Ontario produce at such great prices. All this stuff on the left? About sixty bucks.

I bought, spiralling clockwise from the top, pickling cucumbers, two loaves of olive bread and a pumpernickel loaf, yellow plums, jalapeños, blueberries, yellow and green beans, strawberries, and fresh Ontario peaches. Out of frame are two large hunks of fudge I bought for my husband.

I’ll be canning for weeks. I still haven’t finished eating the stuff I made last year.

There are a ton of pickling cucumbers. I made two batches of spicy dill spears from a recipe found in Food in Jars, a beautifully designed book, written by Marisa McClellan.

The recipe calls them Classic Dill Pickles, but I added a little more chili, and from a drop of the brine on my finger, it seems quite spicy, though perhaps the flavour will mellow over the coming months. Either way, I’m excited.

Two batches amounts to eight 500 ml jars, about 30 cucumbers, and it looks like I haven’t even made a dent. I still have an absurd amount of cucumbers left over.

I recently made a batch of bread and butter pickles using cucumbers from my garden, but McClellan has a similar recipe that calls for red pepper, so I’m going to give that a go, as well as seeing what else I can make with them. I’ll probably make another batch of the spicy dill, and see about a mustard recipe too (sorry, Christine).

I have so many ideas about what I’m going to make. I need more jars.

Cucumbers have been doing really well in my garden. They’re pickling cucumbers, and I finally had enough to can, so yesterday I made bread and butter pickles using this recipe from Simply Recipes.

I only had the cucs on ice for 3 hours instead of 4, and I added slightly more chili pepper flakes than the recipe called for, and added the whole cloves and allspice to the jars, rather than allow them to be randomly distributed in the jars. The recipe says it will make five 500 mL jars, but I ended up with only four, and that was almost pushing it.

Next time I may play around with the spices a little more. Get adventurous. But as is, it smelled fantastic – I can’t wait to eat them. But, of course, I’ll have to. That’s the nature of pickles.

I couldn’t resist, and tried the pickled beets I made in May after a month and they weren’t quite ready. They were better two and even three months later. I’ve learned my lesson. Better to wait until they’re properly pickled and enjoy their full flavour rather than be greedy and open them too soon.

Patience is something I still need to learn.

Banana Pistachio Jam

Dude, it’s totally a thing. I know. I had no idea either.

At the beginning of the month Kim came over and we made pickled beets. Yesterday we made banana pistachio jam.

I the recipe in Jody Vassallo’s Preserving Basics, which, I admit, I initially bought for the pretty pictures of food.

It’s a part of the My Cooking Class series, which shows photos of all ingredients, tools, and steps in the process. It’s pretty awesome.

The only modification we made was to use sliced pistachios rather than chopped. They’re a little more expensive, but it looks incredible.

In fact, we couldn’t wait. We made biscuits and nommed nearly a jar’s worth of jam while the rest were taking their turn in the water bath.

I want to try adding vanilla beans. The warm flavour of vanilla seems like it would go well with the sweetness of the bananas Next time. As is, it’s already one of the tastiest jam recipes I’ve tried.