I Relish This One

The best relish in the world – Cucumber Relish via the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. That’s it. That’s the one, right there. I made a batch last year and decided I don’t need to bother with another. Or bother with sharing it, except for with my parents. And possibly my in-laws, but they live farther away (not hard when my parents live 1.4 miles away) so it’s easier to hide relish from them.

Since I plan on eating all of this in-house (aka, I’m not sharing except with those who live in my house) I reused jars.

<gasp>

Yes, I reused jars. Jars from salsa, spaghetti sauce, olives, and pickles. Like the ones I got from the store with stuff in them, and instead of recycling the jars I’m reusing them. As long as I sterilize them and they still seal just fine, I see no problem with this. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.

But, back to the relish. It uses cucumbers, red and green peppers, onions, celery, and spices. Hubby, who usually won’t eat peppers or onions, has declared this relish the best ever and will eat copious amounts of it. Even after I told him it contains the evil peppers and onions.

I chopped, salted, waited, rinsed, added the brine, stirred it all up, and canned. I like a chunky relish, otherwise I would have considered running the veggies through the meat grinder like I did with the tomato sauce.

The waiting phase...

I have my eye on the Hotdog Relish as well, which uses green tomatoes. I have a feeling I’ll have lots of green tomatoes to put to use… I’ll let you know how it turns out.