Love Those Wide Open Spaces: Trading Treasures

http://lovethosewideopenspaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/trading-treasures.html

Years ago, I once offered to supply the eggs for a breakfast meeting my employer was sponsoring.

You would have thought I’d killed the family dog.

“Absolutely not,” the locals scolded, “your yard eggs are too precious for that!”

This was during my first foray into rural Florida culture, and the exchange taught me a lesson that stayed with me ever since.

Here in the country, you sell your eggs to help support your family, or you share your backyard treasure with a valued friend.

Our egg harvest is bountiful right now, as I mentioned earlier this week, and we have plenty of eggs to share.

You never know how gifts from the home will be loved until you share with casual friends. This week our extra eggs went with Davis to be shared with a co-worker, Jeff, that he’s known for years but rarely runs into.

Our timing was great. Jeff and family had a houseful of seasonal visitors in town this week and fresh farm eggs were a novelty. We love to get feedback from newbies.

But here’s the best part. Jeff is a gardener, and he has a hobby we didn’t know about. He raises quite a pepper garden. You know, he grows green and sweet reds, habernero, and jalapeno peppers. He has them all and keeps looking for more.

Today we’re sharing in HIS harvest. This week he passed along two jars of his famous hot pepper jam to share with Davis and me. We love hot foods so he selected a hot jalapeno pepper jam that has a gorgeous red and green color to it, and red savina pepper jam made from those hottest of habanero peppers. Boy, are we grateful.

Jeff’s hot pepper jam tastes both hot and sweet, a wonderful combination. And it’s just soooo addicting!

His pepper jams are amazingly delicious on bread or toast, but they’re also good as a snack. My favorites are to spread pepper jam with either cream or goat cheese on a cracker, or on a bagel with lox.

Really…it makes my mouth water to simply write about it!

So here we are on Saturday morning and you can see the status of our jars. They’ll never make it to Week 2.

Good stuff, Jeff. You make some good stuff.

- Sanne Collins

From the Ranch in Florida

How to Make Pepper Jam

After downing a jar of this jam, I decided it may be time to make it ourselves and off I went in search of recipes. I thought I would share one I might be trying.

Hot Jalapeño Pepper Jam

Makes about 6 half-pints

4 cups of seeded and finely diced peppers

(about 10 jalapeños, 2 green peppers and 2 red peppers)

1 cup apple cider vinegar

1.75 ounce package of powdered pectin such as Sure-Jell

5 cups granulated sugar

Fill a water bath canner about half full, add the empty canning jars and bring to a boil.

Lower heat and leave jars in the hot water.

Fill a saucepan with water and bring to a boil. Lower heat and add the lids; keep hot. Prepare a boiling water canner and sterilize the jars, lids, and bands.

Meanwhile, in a large stainless steel pot, combine the diced peppers and vinegar.

Gradually stir in the pectin, and bring the mixture to a rolling boil.

Add all of the sugar at once and return to a boil. Once at a boil again continue to cook for 1 minute.

Remove from heat and skim off any foam.

Ladle into the hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace and wipe jar rims with a wet paper towel.

Fit with lids and screw on the bands firmly. Place the jars in the canner on a rack and add more boiling water to at least 1 inch above the jars. Bring to a boil, cover, and boil for 10 minutes--if using 1 pint jars, boil for 15 minutes.

What’s Been Keeping Me Busy Lately

Love Those Wide Open Spaces is a blog designed to follow my daily life as a freelance writer and rancher. It’s a life full of constant change and a wide scope of interests.

Freelance writing, by its definition, requires the ability to write on a variety of subjects, to juggle many assignments during the times of plenty, and to fill the void when checks are slow. That said, I’m always writing.

Much of my work is done for others such as corporations, websites, or articles penned under another’s name. I’ve sold the rights to these works, so they can’t be shared.

However, many of my projects are available under my own name and can be read right here on the web.

You can click on either the site or the story below to see them.

Check out what’s been keeping me busy lately!