T Stands for Pickings from the Garden

  Hi everyone. Happy new week to you, and hello to everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's   blog for T day.

  So what's new with me? By next T day I will have had my first physical therapy session, but I must say since I've been resting my shoulder, it is improving. That is good news. 😊 Hopefully in another month I can go out and do some heavy duty yard projects that were on my agenda for this year. But if it takes longer to feel better, it takes longer. Getting the shoulder/rotator cuff improved is the most important thing.

  This past week I went out fishing one day (didn't catch a thing), went over to Maine to go to Costco, and rested my shoulder. Luckily we had some beautiful weather so I was able to do a lot of afternoon resting in my hammock with a good book, and maybe, but I'm not 100% admitting to it, I also took a couple of nice naps in between pages of my book. 😉

   I've also been picking lots of things from my garden, including a whole lot of cucumbers and zucchini. I made 2 loaves of chocolate zucchini bread (sorry forgot to take photos- I gave one loaf to my daughter and have frozen the other one), and I also did some pickling.

    My first pickling project was to make some chunky sweet pickle and onion relish. I halved the recipe for the cucumbers and onions because I didn't need jars and jars of relish. You can see in this next photo the pre-soak with some salt. If you aren't familiar with pickle making, the salt pulls out the excess water, which you then drain before you finish.

   I wasn't sure how much pickle juice I would need with my chopped veggies, so I made a full batch. I actually only needed about half of this, which make sense since I only made about half a batch of chopped cukes and onions.

 I decided instead of wasting the extra juice, and since I had more cucumbers, I would make some butter and sugar pickles.

   Here's all my finished canning after I put them in jars and then processed them in boiling water.  

   Before I filled any jars I took a photo, and I happened to get my mug filled with some homemade ice tea. Here's my drink for T day this week. 

   I'm letting my pickles and relish sit a few weeks to really flavor up, and then I'll be having some. I can't wait to try the pickles especially. Usually homemade pickles beat the kind you buy in jars at the store.

   That's all for me. Wishing everyone a happy T day and week ahead.