Canning - Preserves and Pickles

This is probably not the best time of year to be talking about canning (I suppose it's more of a spring/summer activity), but I've been thinking/doing some canning lately during my holiday break - about 2 weeks in, yay!

For preserves, I like to do an organic strawberry or mixed berry preserves with some red wine (merlot or cabernet) using frozen fruit.  I think the first time, I didn't use enough pectin and too much wine (whoops!), so it didn't firm up very well.

...But now they turn out gorgeous and lovely.  I just bought a few bags of frozen strawberries from Trader Joe's, so let the winter canning commence!

(And the pot afterwards!)

I started pickling cucumbers when we were going through so many jars of store-bought pickles and me being increasingly wary of yellow dye and high fructose corn syrup so often among the ingredients list (urg).  I still have yet to master those scrumptious bread-and-butter pickles you get at the store, but I have increased the sugar content - though some recipes call for several cups of it, oof!

I also add some pickling spice, salt, some vinegar-based barbecue sauce for heat (I don't add too much - don't want a Bloody Mary-looking jar!), and regular white vinegar.  So far, so good.

Transportation and Health

I like (effective) infographics - really caters to my right- and left-brain interests!  The one below is a little long, but has a lot of interesting information.  It suggests solutions to alternative transportation, though they aren't always that clear cut in real practice...

For instance, due to my partner's job, I commute about 40-45 minutes to campus for my MPH courses - but the trade-off is that he only travels about 15 minutes to work.  Sure, moving closer to campus would cut down on gasoline, etc., costs, but for many reasons, this works out the best for the both of us.  Not entirely environmentally friendly, but I think that's OK.  (If the infographic is hard to see, here's the link.)

Oh!  Speaking of bicycling, here's another graphic on biking safely - always a nice reminder, I think!

Ride safe, readers!