In August, Cop Car came for a visit, and helped us can the 2006 chili sauce. Elegante Mother's chili sauce is a condiment that is used with pork roast, and can be used with leftover roast pork to make a sandwich spread. It's made of tomatoes, peppers, celery, onions, and LOTS of spices and vinegar. We've made a batch every year for at least ten years, probably longer. If you're interested in the recipe, I've posted it here.
I had to move some things in the mud room, and I needed to store this year's batch of chili sauce. Somehow FOUR BOXES of half-pint jars ended up on the counter, waiting for my attention. Meanwhile, my sisters are saying to me that they want the annual distribution of chili sauce!
I went to the mudroom closet this afternoon, and started checking out the stack of boxes filled with canning jars that I had stored there. Box after box came out of that black hole. In all there were easily ten boxes filled with home canned goods. As I looked through the boxes, I discovered that many of them don't have a date or label. Some of the jars have a little masking tape tab with the year, and some of the boxes have a date on the side, but there are 82 half-pint jars of chili sauce, and 39 of them are unmarked.
I have 16 jars of 2006 sauce, 17 jars of 2005, and 10 jars of 2003. I suspect one box of twelve jars is the 2004 vintage. I also have 11 full pints of chili sauce from 1996! AND....a dozen jars of mustard pickles from the same year, which will be thrown out. I didn't like the results of that batch and shouldn't have bothered to keep them.
I'm going to get Elegante Mother and Dear Husband to assist me, and we are going to create "gift boxes" of chili sauce for my sisters. We're going to clean the mudroom closet. YES! I think 27 little jars of chili sauce will be going down the tubes unless I can find a way to make potpourri of them. I have one of those itty bitty crock-pots that you use for simmering potpourri. I bet I could heat the chili sauce with a little water in one of those and the house would smell WONDERFUL! The clove and cinnamon scent would be perfect for the season.
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. Waste not, want not. Doesn't chili sauce potpourri sound like a virtuous thing?? *G*
Comments (2)
Easy, there...you're reaching! Where in the world were all of those boxes of jars hidden that I didn't notice? One or two jars, I wouldn't have seen; but, 82??!
Posted by Cop Car | October 26, 2006 9:06 AM
Posted on October 26, 2006 09:06
(grins) They're small, CC...small. I had most of them well hidden, stacked on the floor of the mudroom closet. Since that is Dear Husband's territory, I rarely go there, as you can tell.
Want me to send some chili sauce??*G*
Posted by buffy | October 26, 2006 3:00 PM
Posted on October 26, 2006 15:00