learning to pickle

today i tried my first beet pickle that i pickled myself! earlier this month i was lucky enough to be invited over to shana and glenn's house to spend an afternoon learning how to pickle!



once we trimmed the beets of their greens, we plunked them into 2 big pots and started to boil them. while the beets were cooking, we sat down and enjoyed a beautiful lunch that shana prepared!





i think the soup that she served me was her famous immune booster soup - so delish!

but uh oh! mr. cooper (not to be confused with this cooper) got into the cookies and ate half of the plate - naughty beagle!

after lunch, while waiting for the beets to cool down, we started cleaning and sanitizing the jars.



then it was time to hunker down, cut the carrots and beets and then fill the jars!





once the jars were filled, shana did some quick math to get the right amount of brine for all the jars we had. then we filled the jars with brine and started to process them.

we processed the jars for about 10-15 min each and once the jars cooled and the lids popped they were ready!

i've given a lot of the jars away as christmas presents and hope to hear back soon about how everybody finds them!

thank you shana for teaching me how to pickle, letting me use your kitchen and your herbs and treating me to a delicious lunch :) maybe next year we can do a pickling session at my house and i can return the favour!