Sweet Pickled Beets

Yesterday was the day for pickling all of those lovely Free beets I had received on Wednesday. But first though, I had to drive into town to get vinigar. Apparently the last of mine was used to clean the coffee maker and when I had picked up the 2 dozen 1 litre/quart jars on Friday I should have remembered the vinigar. Oh well. It turned out fine since I decided to do a little roadside stand and farmer's market shopping too.

At one stand I bought a bunch of red potatoes, peppers, red onions, 2 types of squash, a cantelope and a mystery melon. Then I went to an apple orchard and bought a gallon of macintosh apples, 5 pounds of gala apples, 5 dozen corn, and some lovely unpasturized honey.

Next I went to Tillsonburg and visited the farmer's market there and met up with a person I know from work. He has a farm and amazingly did not lose all of his tomatoes to the late blight. I managed to get a couple boxes of tomatoes (about half a bushel) and some green beans. He said he will bring the rest of my tomatoes and half a bushel of peppers to my work on Friday.

Then I hit a sale at the mall and bought myself two pairs of good runners for work and for hiking at home. I also went grocery shopping. Needless to say, my car was FULL. After I got home my son helped me put things away and I started the process of making my sweet pickled beets.

I put 2 large pots and my huge canner on the stovetop full of beets and hot water, and brought them to a boil. I cooked them for an hour since they are very large beets. Once the two smaller pots were done cooking, I refilled them and cooked the rest of the beets. By the time I peeled and sliced those, the ones in the canner were done cooking and I was able to empty that pot, and get it cleaned out for the clean water and the actual canning process.

By the time I was finished I had 25 quarts/litres of pickles and my husband, son and his friend were almost finished husking the corn for me to start cooking.

At the end of my day I had managed to make all the beets, cook and slice off the kernals of corn, and have 20 two-cup bags of corn in the freezer, plus 12 cups for the mustard corn relish I plan on making today. I also have enough left over to make a corn chowder on Tuesday.