My Adventures With Canning

Tomolives

I love summer. Anyone who knows me, knows that I would give my left arm to never see a snowflake again. I love the warm weather, trips to the beach and the fruits and veggies that come with the world's most perfect season.

Spicy Habanero Garlic Dill Pickles 

The market where I do most of my grocery shopping stocks it's shelves with the most beautiful local produce all summer.... you can literally taste the sunshine in the tomatoes. I love knowing that the peaches that I am eating come from the next state over, or that the Kale in my stir-fry was grown less than an hour away. Unfortunately, this local growing wonderland is short lived in the most-of-the-time-freezing city of Chicago, and while I was grocery shopping the other day, I felt compelled to scoop up a ton of produce and preserve all of it's sunshiney glory by way of canning. Rather than buying every fresh item I saw, I thought that I should first see how this goes and start small. Pickles seemed like the obvious first step into canning and as far as I know, (I'm giving them a few weeks to get really sour :) my canning test drive was a success. I made garlic dill, spicy garlic dill (made spicy with the addition of one habanero pepper per jar) and Tomolives.
Tomolives are lovely little pieces of heaven introduced to me by my friends Melannie and Sam. Sam makes some of the best martinis in the world and often throws a few tomolives in his drink rather than the standard olive. A tomolive is a cute and delicious pickled tiny green tomato that just goes perfectly with some chilled vodka. Try them, they are a wonderful secret that southerners have kept from us for far too long. Thanks Sam and Melannie :)

For my tomolives, used a mixed variety of tiny grape and cherry tomatoes that I had lying around. They look so pretty!! I'll update once they have had time to sit for a few weeks.

Click here for the tomolive recipe that I used

Click here for the pickle recipe that I used 

Click here for safe canning practices