Pepper Jelly

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When John brought home all the muscadines and scuppernongs the other day he also had a few small jalapeno pepper in the bucket too.  He said he wanted to make some pepper jelly.  I have never eaten pepper jelly so I wasn't sure what it tastes like, but hey, I'm game when it comes to canning.  

John likes hot stuff.  He loves peppers, of all sorts, any kind of pepper or hot sauce.  There have been times when we had a collection of different varieties available in our pantry.  There was a period of time when we went grocery shopping he would tell me we were out of hot sauce and we would discuss it a bit and I would give in, knowing that we had some at home, but not wanting my husband to have to do without his precious hot sauce, inevitably I was right and we would end up with 3 or 4 jars at home when we got there.  It has become a running joke when we go shopping now.  

Some of the places we have lived have had plenty of room for extra stock of food, like my wonderful house in Colorado.  But the rental house we lived in when we first moved to Co., it didn't have room for anything extra.  Our farm house is much the same, plus, the new kitchen will be installed in a few weeks so I don't want anything extra in there right now since we will have to move everything out of their soon when we gut it.  I am still trying to figure out where we are going to put all of the jelly that we have been busily making, but I am certain that we will find a place.  

Have I ever told you how I hate cooking on an electric stove?  I love my stove in my house in Colorado.  A beautiful 5 burner gas cooktop.  I had my fair share of problems with it, especially after boiling over a huge pot of spaghetti water on it.  We had to pay a couple of hundred dollars to get that fixed.  Well, I am just as bad, but probably worse with an electric stove.  The one in the house here has the electric coils.  You know the ones.  They turn red when they are hot and when you are cooking on them you have to be really careful not to get the pot going too high, especially jelly.  Green jelly at that, boiled over all over the stove.  It was so hot we couldn't carry it anywhere, not that there really is anywhere to carry it in the kitchen.  We have very limited counter space.  Regardless, my sweet husband came behind me and cleaned up my entire mess so that I could continue the process.  What a sticky mess!

We ended up with 10 1/2 pints and 4 1/4 pints of delicious pepper jelly, I tasted it, it really is.  The jelly has a little kick to it.  You mix apple cider vinegar sugar and the peppers with a little food coloring.  John included some poblano peppers in the mix which added to the dark color.  It seems that pepper jelly takes a little longer to set than fruit jelly, up to a week, so we will have to wait a little while to find out if it all turned out.  I think we will put a jar in the refrigerator to help the process along and I am sure it will get eaten either way.  

Until we meet again.




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