Colors of Summer- Produce

I am very short on blog time right now. 

So here are some colors of summer.

Fresh produce from the garden

in reds, greens and creams.

The chickens are the beneficiaries of our cherry tomatoes most often.

These are volunteers from last season.

The chicks love to grab them and run, hoping no other hen steals it away,

Tomatillos await salsa making.

The young watermelon wasn't really ripe, 

although I don't know if it was going to get there anyway,

But here is my pride and joy.  

The deer must have forgotten,

surely they ate every green leaf and flower that the beans put forth.

My first beans.

This is it.

Just a handful.

I'll be sporadic until things calm down here. 

(more about that in later blog posts)

We've got lots of rain coming the next few days, remnants of the hurricane.

It's supposed to be quite a few inches but spread over three days.

Maybe the garden will have a second spurt.

Happy Labor Day Weekend .

The Squash Queen Makes Gummies

You all know I'm the Squash Queen of Robertsville, right?

This is only a portion of what we've harvested this year, even after fighting the bugs.

We've dehydrated them, grilled them, topped them with alfredo sauce

 and baked them with brown sugar and butter.

I still have squash, squash and more squash.

What now?

Gummies from 

Common Sense Homesteading!

I peeled, seeded and chopped them into thin strips.

I soaked them in the grape juice concentrate, simmered and drained.

I decided to try them three ways:

Plain

Sugared

Sugared with powdered lemon drink mix.

I laid them on the dehydrator trays, set the temperature

and by morning, I had gummies!

My favorite have to be the ones with sugar and drink mix, they are a bit more sour.  

That's how I like my dehydrated apples too, pre-treated with lemon juice.

It has more of a zing later.

I'll admit I have an addiction- I love Trolli Brite Sour Gummy Worms.

I could eat the entire package in one sitting (and have).

These have to be more healthy- right?

 Guess what?  They are good!

I took some into work and, believe it or not, some asked for seconds.

That's pretty special considering some crazy squash queen is offering you

wrinkled up purple strips that smell like a wine garden grape stomp!

This was fun to make and you can do it too!  

Follow along with the full color directions provided here.

Sunday Breakfast

What a wonderful, unexpected treat. Sunday Breakfast by Tom the Hubby.

We attended church last night, an option we don't normally take --which means Sunday breakfast is not normally a slow, leisurely affair.  Today; however, it was.

He started with our own processed bacon. 

Cooked in a cast iron skillet, seasoned by age.

Pressed to ensure crispiness.

Dried on a paper towel, awaiting plating.

You will see how delicious this was with the toast slathered in butter or grape jelly goodness next to the eggs either sunny side up (Tom) or broken yolk and swirled to make a wonderful yolkiness (Kathy).  

Oooops!  

Sorry.

Our taste buds got the better of the photo op.

Gone, gone, gone.

Yum.

A New Beginning- Fall Veges

Last weekend I stripped the little side garden of all its old growth, tomatoes being what they were this year, it was no loss!  I planted a section of radishes which are quickly starting to pop up. These are the Easter Egg variety from Botanical Interests, full of various colors and a great producer.

I have two varieties of spinach growing and it looks like every seed "took".  I will need to do some thinning once I see which ones are the best.  If I'm careful, I've been able to transplant the little ones into more sparse areas.

I really didn't care for these finger shaped eggplants but the seeds are forming nicely.  I'll no doubt keep them and maybe grow some in the bigger garden next year.  Someone will like them.

This is one of the swiss chard roots that I plucked out.  I thought I'd just move it to see what would happen and lookey there- new growth!

The cucumbers are still having babies so I let this one be.

My marigolds were outstanding this year.  Hot weather and lack of water was somehow just perfect for them.  I've always loved these flowers and plant them between the vegetables for color and to repel insects.  They don't do much to repel critters though!

The butterfly weed pods are stating to open so I've been trying to spray them down with the hose so they fall where I want them to.  We've attracted so many wonderful butterflies to these, especially the orange ones that are the very same color.  I guess that leads to caterpillars but you can't have butterflies without the munching caterpillars.  

Things are looking much better around here since cooler temperatures ( 90's LOL) arrived.  The pot behind the flowers is filled with sweet potatoes.  I can't wait to see if anything actually grew.  Our potato tower didn't do very well but it was attacked several times by little diggers, some of then turned out to be our cats! Then the dry weather with temperatures over 100 for a lot of July.  We were able to get a meal out of them and they were delicious. Even my granddaughter gobbled them up with her fabulous pork steaks my husband cooked.

Well, it's time to get busy around here, lots to do!

Happy Saturday.

Linking to My Simple Country Living Country Garden Showcase

IT'S A ST. LOUIS THING: PORK STEAKS PART 3

Now we move on to part 3:

Got that cold frosty beer in your hand? Good. Plate of pork steaks? Perfect. We're ready to get cookin'!

The fire is your friend - and your enemy. Too much or too little of it and all that work, not to mention money (have you seen the price of pork lately?) is down the tubes. The secret to really good St. Louis pork steaks is finding the balance. Again, that's why a large cooking surface is really important.

In the picture above the pork steaks have just been put in the pit. On the left side you can see the charcoal and wood. Now, the charcoal you see in the picture is new. I just put it on top of the pile that came out of the starter. In other words, while it may not look real hot, it is. Also, notice where the one piece of hickory is. I'm using it to block the heat from the fire and prevent flare ups. You never want flare ups. Those pork steaks have got a lot of brown sugar on 'em and it'll burn in a heart beat. Keeping the lid closed and the dampers closed down will pretty well control the fire.

I've got the pork steaks arranged so that they are exposed to varying degrees of heat. The ones on the right, they're not getting much at all. And this is the secret to doin' pork steaks right. I want to rotate them in and out of the heat. I move them around about every 15 minutes or so for the first couple of hours, flippin' them over and changing their positions on the grill to cook 'em and give 'em a rest. Get 'em hot and cool 'em down.

But why go to all that trouble?

To get them to look like the steaks in the picture above. These have been in the pit for roughly two hours. Notice how the fat is changing. It's melting and getting crisp. The meat is beginning to pull away from the bone and the brown sugar is starting to caramelize. THAT'S how pork steaks should look.

There's one thing that every good pork steak guy knows - we're cooking fat, not meat. I don't know if all of us know it consciously or intuitively but that's what we're doing. And it's the fat and the way it reacts to the cooking the separates BBQ'd pork steaks from smoked. We're trying to slowly melt it and let it incorporate with the meat. Smokers will get pork steaks fall apart tender but they do it with the fat mostly intact - and greasy. BBQing dries the meat. And that's important because there's so much fat to begin with. We're trying to strike a balance. Too dry and the meat is tough. Too wet and it's greasy.

Keep your eye on the fat. It'll tell you when the meat is done

At this point it's time to get the meat away from the heat because it'll dry out way too much. And once again a big cooking area is your friend. I generally pile the meat up as far from the heat as I can. The reason I pile it up is because by this time the fat has cooked down pretty well and the meat could easily dry out. By piling it up I can let the fat that's still in the steaks wash down the pile helping to keep the moisture at a decent level for the rest of the cooking time. I rearrange the pile ever so often to make sure that all the steaks get an even amount of moisture.

Grab a cold beer out of the box and let's head into the house. It's time to make some sauce.

If you're from St. Louis you know that there's only one sauce, the mother sauce, Maull's. It's a hard sauce to describe. It's not really sweet, like Kansas City Sauce but it's not really vinegar based, either. It's somewhere in the middle. But here's the deal. In St. Louis, nobody ever uses it right out of that bottle. We all doctor it up, adding the things we like to it. I've never seen any other commercial sauce that'll let you do this so well. In that regard it truly is a mother sauce, just like the classic ones we all know.

One of the things that makes Maull's so good for pork steaks is that it's a relatively thin sauce. And that's really important. Cooking the way we do makes those steaks like sponges. They're just looking for a little moisture to suck up. So I thin it out even more.

As I said, we all have our own recipes for sauce and most of them are fairly loose and casual. Mine isn't any different. This drives my poor, sainted wife crazy because I never quantify anything I cook. And sorry to say I really don't know exact quantities with this, either. But I'll give it a shot.

And yes, I know that fresh garlic is better than the stuff in a jar but I forgot to get some and this is always there as a back up.

I use an 18 ounce bottle of Maull's. I pour it in a pot that's sitting on a really low flame. Add about a half can of beer. And drink the other half. Put in some cider vinegar, maybe an ounce or two, but that's just a guess. A handful of brown sugar, maybe a tablespoon of dried onions and a clove of garlic. Then taste it. No too tart, not too sweet. That's what I'm striving for. Let it simmer maybe 15 minutes or so. Go sit out on the porch and enjoy a cold refreshment as your reward while it cooks.

The sauce is going to be real thin, about like tomato soup but just a little thinner still. That's the way we want it.

And if you don't like that recipe make up one of your own. Who am I to judge?

At this point we're maybe 4 - 5 hours into the cooking and we're just about done. The fire has burned down to embers so there really isn't a lot of heat left. Just enough to caramelize the sauce. The pork steaks should be well cooked with the meat pulling away from the bones and the fat nice and crispy. You'll notice that the meat has become so tender that it tears when you move it. There'll still be a bit of moisture from the fat but it will be mostly absorbed or cooked away by now.

Using a mop, slather the sauce all over the meat. Close the lid. In about five minutes open the lid and you'll see most of the sauce has been absorbed and is beginning to caramelize. Flip the steaks and sauce up the other side. In about another five minutes flip 'em over again and put on more sauce. Just keep on going 'til you run out of sauce. Let 'em sit in there for about another beer and then you're done.

At this point you should be able to cut 'em with a fork.  The sauce will be sticky but thin, kind'a like a glaze on ham. The meat, if you used cure, will have a definite hammy pinkness to it. There'll usually be a slight smoke ring, but not much because we really didn't smoke them heavily.

The brown sugar should be well caramelized but not burnt. The fat will be crispy and there should be no grease anywhere, unlike smoked pork steaks. The meat will be moist but not overly so and should melt in your mouth. You'll notice a certain creaminess that comes from the fat being absorbed into the meat.

So grab a beer, a plate full of pork, tuck in and eat!

Well guys, that's pork steak, St. Louis style. I've never written this down before and I sure enjoyed doing it. Most everyone I know in St. Louis learned by doing so I hope this works for you.

One other thing. The great thing about pork steaks here in my hometown is that we all have opinions about them. And we all think our way is the best way. I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly over the years but you know what? Regardless of how they're cooked and regardless of how they taste, pork steaks are a tradition, one that's passed down from parent to kid. The afternoons spent at the pit listening to the Cards and drinking beers, watching the kids play, arguing about the right way to do pork steaks and laughing about everything else can never be replaced.

It's a St. Louis thing.



Part 1
Part 2

IT'S A ST. LOUIS THING: PORK STEAKS PART 2

I left off in Part 1  with the pork steaks prepped and ready to go to the pit. So now I'd like to talk a bit about pits and fuel. Fuel first.

There are really only two ways to go with BBQ pits - gas or wood. While gas pits have their place (usually hooked to chains and used as boat anchors, but I digress) this isn't it. The only proper way to cook pork steaks is over a wood fire. Now, when I say wood I'm including charcoal. But I'm not a big fan of briquettes. More on that in a minute.

So what type of pit should we use? Well, traditionally the pit of choice was a home built 55 gallon barrel pit with the lid quartered out of it and hinged to lift up. There'd be a smokestack on the top with a damper and also a damper controlled air intake. The grill wasn't usually adjustable but sometimes was broken into two pieces so that fuel could be added. But these are just generalities. There were all kinds of different designs, usually depending on the skills and needs of the builder.

Today those steel barrels are getting hard to find so most people buy a factory built pit. The important thing is to find a pit that mimics the qualities of those old pits as closely as possible. That means a large, rectangular cooking area with a lid and air control dampers on both the input and output side.

Don't get me wrong. Any high quality pit can cook really good pork steaks. The Weber Kettle is excellent. It's just easier to cook 'em on a big pit with plenty of room to move around. You'll see why in a bit.

One thing you don't want to use is a vertical smoker. We're not smoking pork steaks, we're Bar-B-Qing them. Vertical smokers are pretty well designed to be used as smokers and that's what they do best. Sure, you can BBQ on 'em but it's not easy to get truly amazing results.

This is the pit I've used now for over twenty years. She's a bit worn for the wear but that doesn't matter. It's time for some fresh paint and a little wood replacement and she'll look as good as new. This is a New Braunfels barrel smoker. The company is no longer in business. I'm fairly sure that the company was bought by Char-broil but I can't swear to it. If you can find one of these online or in a garage sale someplace - buy it. Even though you can find smokers that look like this one at big box stores and other places they aren't the same thing. This pit is made out of 1/8" thick steel. It probably weighs close to 150 pounds. And that means that once it gets hot it stays hot. Consistent and even heat is really important. It makes everything more controllable throughout the entire process. Also, this pit has been out in the weather for over twenty years and, outside of needing to paint it every few years, it shows no real damage. A lightweight pit wouldn't be able to take the beating.

Back to fuel. I like wood. Real wood is the best. The thing is, you need to have access to it and know exactly what it is. All wood is not the same. Some can make your meat taste wonderful and others can ruin it with bitter flavors. We live on acreage and so I occasionally have a hickory or oak tree that I take down. I generally set aside some of the wood for the pit and use it. Nothing better than that.

Most of the time though I use charcoal. It's convenient and it works. I use lump charcoal, not briquettes. The reason for this is that it burns more like real wood and it adds flavor like real wood. Briquettes just don't do those things. I like briquettes for doing beef and other things that are going to cook quickly and with high heat. For pork I always use lump.

This is what lump charcoal looks like if you've never used it. It's just wood that's been turned into charcoal. No binders or anything else. Just wood.

Since I'm using charcoal I need to add some aromatic wood for flavor. I like hickory and it is the sort of semi-official BBQ wood of St. Louis. You'll see oak, too, but hickory is definitely the wood of choice. I don't like chips. I use big ol' chunks of wood, whether from my trees or from the store. I don't soak them in water, either. I want them to burn along with the charcoal. It adds heat to the fire and you'll get plenty of smoke flavor in the meat. I don't want the smoke to dominate everything else when I'm eating.

In the pictures above you can see the fire starter sitting in the small barrel on the side. I put it there mostly because it balances it better than in the big side. The fire will actually go into the big part of the pit. The small barrel is used to contain the fire when smoking meats such as turkeys and hams. It creates a truly indirect heat. But we're not smoking these pork steaks, we're BBQing them. So I want the fire close by the meat.

This is where the big cooking area comes in. I can put the fire in the big barrel close to the meat yet I have the room to get the meat away from fire. In a smaller pit, say the Weber Kettle, I have to build a smaller fire to cook the steaks in the same way which means I'm going to have to refuel it more often. A big pit lets me load it up and go. It also lets me have a hotter fire which allows me to manipulate the way the meat cooks by moving closer or farther away from the heat. There's a huge difference in heat from one end of that pit to the other.

It's finally time to cook. Throw some hickory on the charcoal, close the lid and shut the dampers almost all the way down. Let the pit heat up a bit, which it'll usually do in the time it takes to grab a cold-frosty and get the meat out of the kitchen. The hard work is done and the fun part is about to begin.

We'll start cooking in part 3.

Part 1

Part 3

IT'S A ST. LOUIS THING: PORK STEAKS - PART 1

Hi Everyone-

As I promised- a guest blogger and tutorial- The St Louis Pork Steak by Tom Usher, the hubby.  He's pretty serious about his pork steaks, coming from a family known for its BBQ.  This will be part one of two, or three depending on how wordy he gets- I'll make sure a few photos are scattered here and there.


In his own words, here's Tom --

I was watching CreateTV the other day and BBQ University came on. Steven Raichlen has a great show there. He does stuff over fire that amazes me. But on this particular show he mentioned a food that is close to my heart and one that is peculiar to my hometown, St. Louis, Missouri.

I'm a St. Louis boy from way back. My family moved into this area in the 1840's and we haven't left yet. I'm sayin' this just to establish my bona fides as one that knows St. Louis food.

We have some peculiarities in St. Louis. Actually, we have a whole bunch of them but we'll just stick with food for now. Toasted ravioli, pizza on cracker thin crust with Provel cheese, snouts, pickled pigs feet and Volpi sausage. And beer, of course, lots and lots of beer. You see, like me, St. Louis is a mix of different cultures and people, all having come here because St. Louis was the jumping off point to the great American West. The Italians, Germans and Irish all flowed into a city that already had French and Spanish roots. And it was also the biggest city in a slave state so we have plenty of African influence, too. All these cultures came together to create an area rich in food. And beer, lots and lots of beer. Or did I mention that already?

Anyway, all of these various cultures were hog cultures. The pig reigned supreme in most of the recipes. And not much ever went to waste. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff my German/Italian/Irish family has eaten over the years. Which brings us to one of the most St. Louis-y of all foods, the pork steak.

What's that? You say you've never heard of pork steak? Well, then, grab one of them hickory logs, drag it on over, flip it up on end, grab a couple cold ones out'a the box (did I mention St. Louisan's like beer?) and get comfortable. Let me tell you all about 'em.

Pork steaks come from the shoulder or front leg of the hog. The front leg is called a butt. Basically, it's the top part of the leg, the part that connects to the shoulder. They're often cured as picnic hams or smoked and pulled. They have less fat than the shoulder though considerably more than the long cut ham that comes off the rear leg of the hog. Pork steaks cut from the butt generally cost less that the shoulder.

The shoulder is the prime cut for pork steaks. But not just any part of the shoulder. You want a center cut. If you've ever smoked and pulled a shoulder you know why. The further you get from the center, especially as you move away from the butt, the more gristle and tough meat you start to find. It's entirely possible to do some great pork steaks with end cuts but you always take a chance.

Now, toughness is a relative thing with pork steaks. To say that the end is tougher than the center isn't to say that the center is tender, at least not in comparison to other parts of the hog. It becomes tender through slow cooking. And I mean real slow. It generally takes 5 hours or somewhere there about to BBQ pork steaks. Which isn't a bad thing as long as the icebox is topped off with, you guessed it, beer.

Nearly every recipe I see for pork steaks says that cooking time can be measured in minutes, sometimes all the way up to thirty of them. I've been eating these things all my life and have had them cooked just about every way imaginable and I'm going to say one thing and say it loudly - you CANNOT cook pork steaks quickly and get the maximum flavor and tenderness out of them. It just ain't possible! I've seen it tried, over and over. I've seen people that sear 'em and then put 'em in the oven to tenderize 'em. What you end up with is a relatively tender greasy piece of meat. I've seen people cook 'em like beef steaks, which is what I saw on BBQ University the other day. A guy with the skills of Steve probably made 'em taste fine. He's a highly skilled cook. But I'm going to say this without fear of being wrong - he left a bunch of flavor on the grill that could have been put in those lovely pieces of porky perfection.

So, now we're going to get down to it. I was taught to cook pork steaks by my old man, he by his and on back up the line. We cook 'em the old time St. Louis way, the way working class guys cooked 'em when they got together with their buddies on Saturday afternoons in back alleys and back yards, listenin' to the Cardinals on the radio and...wait for it....drinkin' beer. It ain't fancy and it certainly ain't fast but if you cook 'em this way you'll make converts of the many that swear pork steaks taste like shoe leather and aren't fit for dogs. And if you've never had 'em? Well, once you do you'll wonder why you ever wasted your time eatin' anything else. I promise.

The picture above shows 5lbs. of center cut pork steaks. A couple things you need to pay attention to when you buy your steaks can be seen. First, look at the marbling. Notice that there is a fairly even distribution of fat throughout the meat. Also notice that the fat on the edges is nicely trimmed. A bunch of fat around the edges doesn't do a lot for the end product and you'll be paying for the weight. A little fat on the edges is good because it'll help to keep things a bit moister during cooking as it melts. One other thing I've found. When you're getting the steaks push in on the meat through the package. It should be fairly soft and when you push it in it should stay pushed in. I've found over the years that springy pork steaks are tough pork steaks.

Preppin' the steaks is easy and completely up to the guy doin' the cookin'. I keep it simple. Some chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder (we were out this time around) and brown sugar. You may notice that there isn't any salt. There's a reason for that and it's something I do that, well, is just a bit unusual. Before I add any other spices I use a sugar cure on my pork steaks. It's made by Morton Salt and is the same cure we use to cure hams and bacon. It's applied at a rate of one tablespoon per pound of meat. I rub it in evenly on the meat and put the meat in the icebox for about three hours. If you decide to do this DO NOT add any salt at any time during the cooking process. Cure will make the meat salty enough. If you've ever had country cured ham that's the taste and level of saltiness you can expect from doing this. I like the taste and so far nearly everyone that's had it likes it, too. It will tenderize the meat and also give it a pink color, just like ham.

But this is purely optional and is not essential to cooking pork steaks. If you don't use it then just salt to taste.

One other thing about using cure. After it's been in the icebox for three hours or so take it out and use running water to thoroughly scrub the remaining cure off the meat. If you don't it will be inedible. Completely dry the meat before applying the rest of the spices.

The picture above is the pork steaks all seasoned up and happy, ready to go on the pit. In part two I'll go on a bit about the types of pits that work best and the fuel to use along with the indirect high heat method I use to cook 'em. Thanks for reading this and I'll see y'all tomorrow. Keep the pits smokin'!

Stay Tuned for Part 2

Part 2

Part 3

pork chart link credit

Linking to Homestead Revival Barn Hop 75

Another Villain in Town

Just when you think you have it all down, there's a new guy in town.

The dreaded cucumber beetle.

Oh so pretty with his little spots, looking lady buggish.

But he's sick, greenly sick.  And after your cucumbers, melons and squash.

I found mine inside a broken squash vine, just sitting around.

The rest were resting on what is left of my cucumber vines, which didn't do very well anyway.

I don't really know what to do about these.

I can't spray, the bees are too busy and the mantis is hanging around eating bad bugs.

I did kill the Grand Daddy of all squash bugs today.  

This was no nymph, no young adult.
He was as brown and crusty as they come.

I am hoping they are like vampires.

You kill the source, they all die.

Good luck with that, right?

I'm going to have a guest host in a day or so.

There will be a tutorial- and a recipe.

You'll have to check back and see!

Until then, enjoy the weekend!

A Recipe We Will Never Know

Spaghetti Squash Alfredo

Yum!  What could be better than 

Butter

Cream

Mozzarella

Parmesan

Ham 

Peas

Basil (from my garden)

and Spaghetti Squash ( from my garden) ?

What's the recipe you might ask.

Heck, I have No Idea.

My husband isn't telling. 

It's not as if he is trying to hide anything.

He's just irritating.

One of those cooks who doesn't use recipes.

No idea of how much of which ingredients he used.

I have to have a recipe.

And if I double it, I measure it twice- really, I do.

Otherwise I might get confused, and with cooking, that's easy to do.

My mother-in-law always did the same thing.

You should have seen us on Thanksgiving!

So, if you want the recipe, it is NOT this one:

Not this recipe.

But it started that way.

It just ended up being different.

Sorry.

It looks good though.

Rain Does a Garden Good

We've had a couple of rain showers lately, after several dry weeks with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.  I was about ready to throw in the towel, between the heat, the constant watering and  fighting squash bugs but it was worth the wait.  Now my only problem is using everything up!

We have acorn and spaghetti squash, yellow summer squash, some cucumbers, several green and red peppers plus a few tomatoes.

The porch flowers are doing fine, so is the planter with sweet potato vines - real ones, not ornamental.  I can't wait to see if any sweet potatoes grew.  

The little chicks are laying- the three are from the new Buffs, the larger is for comparison.  We can have a  teensy weensy omelet now.

The plate is Taylor's.  You can "play" with your food as you decorate the lady's head LOL!  She's a little old for this and doesn't really eat off of it, but I would.  You're never too old to have some kid fun.

The tomatillos are next- just about ready to be turned into salsa and a really super sounding authentic Mexican dish using pork- provided by one of our own lovely readers!  I'll have to post about that one.

I can't believe we have had our WINDOWS open for a couple of days now.  I actually got to use a little throw while laying outside on our lounger during the meteor shower Saturday night.   

Life is good.

Linking The Country Garden Showcase 33

Yellow Squash and Cucumber Pickles

Refrigerator squash, red onion and cucumber pickles.

With a bumper crop of various squash on the way, I decided I had to do something with the yellow squash sitting in the fridge.  I came across an on-line recipe so I used it as my base although I changed the ingredients a little to match what I had on hand.  They are refrigerator pickles so I am not worried about getting the proper mix for long term storage.

1-2 yellow squash (small)

1 small cucumber

1/4 sliced (large) red onion

1 TBL combination kosher salt and celery seed

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup white vinegar

3/4 tsp mustard seed

1/4 tsp dry mustard

I took a couple of yellow squash and a spare cucumber, slicing them between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick.  I used about a quarter of a large red onion slicing it a bit thinner.  I placed them into an 8 cup plastic bowl. Then I sprinkled a TBL of combined kosher salt and celery seed.  After coating well, I let it sit in the refrigerator for an hour while I enjoyed a vintage television program.

After an hour I drained the liquid.

In a medium pan I combined sugar, vinegar, mustard seed and dry mustard.

Stir and heat to boiling

Add the drained vegetable mixture

Reheat to a boil again and then remove from the heat 

Let cool for 30 minutes

Ladel into clean pint jars

Wipe the jar and lids down

Screw on lids

Refrigerate for 24 hours

Use with the next 30 days.

I hope they are as tasty as they look!

Linking to Barn-hop-74.html

The Country Garden Showcase 33