Vacation is over, or did it really begin?

It’s not been the best vacation the Witch has ever experienced but it’s certainly not been the worst.

It’s just, well, I made a list, much like a bucket list, and didn’t even come close to fulfilling it. It’s so sad because really I don’t feel I have had a vacation.

Instead I harvested continually, I chopped, sliced, peeled and diced, nonstop. What a stupid idiot really. Are we going to be bunkered down in the basement or some cave? I don’t know what I was thinking and yet I continued to work throughout my holiday. The weather didn’t help either, it’s been raining everyday now for almost two weeks and we did have that whole Hurricane Earl thing to deal with but still. I guess this may be the problem with stay-cations. You tend to stay!! At home there’s always something that needs doing. The garden was ripe and full and what was I to do? Walk away? Not likely as I raised most of it from seed and it felt like 6 months of hard labour. So every day I picked and selected the finest veggies and turned the fruits of my labour into Salsa, Hot Dog Relish, Mustard Pickles and lots of stewed tomatoes and I haven’t even figured out yet what to do with the rest.

Well, it’s just that now I’m tired and need some time to beach-comb and have a nice bottle of dry red wine waiting for me. HUBBY, do you hear me calling? Oh wait, you’ve been up a ladder the last 2 weeks shingling the gazebo roof in rain and hurricane conditions. I’m not complaining (well, maybe a little). It’s just that I’m looking at the end of my holiday coming up really fast and I don’t feel rested up enough to go back (sigh)! And what am I going to do with all the leftover produce from the garden? We’ll probably just end up taking it in to work next week for our co-workers, lucky bastards!

Anyway, here are some pictures of the progress on the gazebo and a few of my first attempt at salsa (it’s yummy!). Oh, and it was pizza night this week and almost all my toppings were from the garden (yummy, too!). I’ll try to be in a better frame of mind for the next post!

The lower roof is just getting started. The drip edge is installed and the first of the rubber membrane is attached.

What! Hubby’s laying down on the job? No, that’s just the angle of the ladder."

It wasn’t easy trying to nail down the tarpaper in the driving wind and rain!

The salsa ingredients have all been chopped.

The salsa has been cooked down and now it’s ready to be packed away in containers for the freezer.

These are the peppers I brought in from the garden to top my pizza. There are a selection of Jalapeno and Hungarian Banana peppers, some mild and some hot!

These are all the toppings for my pizza. Along with the peppers are some of our tomatoes and onions. The pineapple was store-bought.

The finished pizzas were worth the effort!

Vera's Mustard Pickle Recipe for the Sisters

The Sisters of the Blog asked in a comment this week if we would offer up the recipe for Granny's Mustard Pickles and here it is. The picture above is of the actual note she wrote all those years ago. Granny is 94 years old now and this is her mother's recipe so you could say that it is time-tested!

I was really glad to have been watching her make the pickles that day because her measurements were a little off. She would chop the vegetables and pile them to the very top of her 4 cup measure and call it a quart. It was really more like 5 cups or a bit more. My cousin's wife tried making them with the amount listed and her pickles were way too runny.

I've tranlated the note for you below (my comments are in bold).

Dutch Salad Pickles (Mom’s)

Chop fine;

1 qt. green tomatoes
1 qt. green cucumbers
1 qt. onions
1 small cabbage
1 small cauliflower
2 red peppers
2 green peppers
note: 1 qt. = 5 cups for this measure

Put all vegetables into a large plastic tub.
Add ½ cup salt (coarse), cover with cold water and leave overnight.

In the morning, drain well. (This is the secret)

Add (make) dressing.

In a large canning pot mix:
10 tsp Keen’s dry mustard
1 cup flour
6 cups white sugar
½ ounce tumeric

Mix with a little cold vinegar and add 1½ qts.(6 cups) of vinegar.
Bring to a boil (gradually) and pour on pickles (add the vegetables to the hot dressing) and boil 20 minutes (bring back to the boil and then time 20 minutes). (I use some of the 1½ qts vinegar to mix the flour, sugar, mustard and tumeric. I find that it is too thin after the pickles cook if I add more vinegar to mix.) And you can cook them less, it won’t hurt, you have to be careful that it doesn’t stick to the pot and burn (stir constantly!).

Makes about 6 to 6 1/2 litres.

If you make these please tell everybody that they are "Vera's Mustard Pickles". She would be very glad to know you did.

Canning Season Has Commenced!

Don’t you just love this time of year, when all the hard work that you have put into your garden is starting to pay off? I know that I do and I try to take as much advantage as I can of all the beautiful produce out in the backyard. It has been a really productive growing season mostly because of the long sunny summer and early spring. We’ve never had better results from our carrots and beets, they are HUGE. One of each and a piece of steak or chicken is enough for a meal for the two of us. The yellow beans came thick and fast and are just now getting too old. And the tomatoes, oh, the tomatoes! We’ve had cherry tomatoes but the tub full and the lucky people at work have been enjoying the extras again this year. I’m also more than happy with the beefsteaks. Some of them have grown huge, almost the size of grapefruits and they are actually ripening on the vine. That’s a bit unusual for us; the bigger tomatoes usually just stay green or rot before ripening. Last year we actually had to buy some red ones from the grocery store to make Hot Dog Relish.

Last weekend we decided that it was time to make a batch of my Grandmother Vera’s Dutch Salad pickles. These have been a long time favourite in my family and ever since she became unable to make them I have been doing them for myself from the recipe she wrote out for me. I still have the note she gave me and it is part of the fun of doing them to look at it and remember watching her make them for the first time.


Mustard pickles, because that’s a much more descriptive name for them than Dutch Salad, are pretty easy to make but they are time-consuming. The chopping and the brining take at least a couple of hours the first day and then the draining and boiling and bottling take another couple of hours the second day.


The tedious part is the constant stirring once we start bringing the pot up to a boil. It can take a long time to get there and then it has to be held there for 20 minutes. You really don’t want them to stick and burn on the bottom of the pot though so continuous stirring is required.








This year’s batch made 8 500ml and 9 250ml jars which is more than enough for me, Hubby has never cared for them for some reason. Mustard pickles go with just about any kind of meal so I eat them regularly but still with that many jars there might even be enough to share.

After I finished making the Mustard pickles I still had time and the inclination to do something else so I decided that I would make a batch of Chow Chow. This is something else that Granny used to make but unfortunately I never got a copy of that recipe and I’ve been trying to duplicate it for the past few years. I’ve tried a bunch of other people’s recipes but they haven’t been quite right. Last year though I found one that was pretty close. It was too salty and not spicy enough but that’s easily fixed.


Chow Chow is pretty simple, mainly just tomatoes, onions, vinegar, salt and a spice bag which gets removed before the relish is bottled. Both this recipe and the Mustard pickles use green tomatoes which we have a ton of this year. We also have lots of onions. It is so much more satisfying to preserve your harvest if you don’t need to go to the grocery store to buy any extras.


The vegetables have all been chopped and are soaking in the brine. It’s a beautiful colour at this point don’t you think? Looks almost good enough to eat… This year we only got 4 250ml and 1 500ml jars plus a part jar for the fridge. I usually only eat this with fish so that’s more than enough.


Well, that was last weekend. This week we decided to make our grape jelly mainly because the birds and the remnants of Hurricane Earl were clearing the vines already. We still managed to harvest almost twice as many grapes as last year even though we left some unripened ones on the vine. The birds can have those.


This variety of grape, which we think is Bath, never sweetens up enough to eat. They’re just too tart to enjoy but it makes great jelly. They look really nice, too. We took in some that were still a little green but that didn’t seem to make any difference to the process.


The first step was washing the grapes in a sink full of water to remove any dirt and bugs. Spiders, too, yuck! Then the tiresome job of removing the fruit from the stems began. With the two of working at this it still took over an hour to finish but we ended up with a big pot full of fruit.




The next step is to dump the grapes into the canning pot, add a little water, mash them and then bring them up to a boil. We had so many grapes that we had to use two pots. The idea here is to break up the grapes and get them to release all their juice. After they have done that the skins and seeds are strained out and you’re left with pure grape juice. It’s a messy process, though. Once the juice is collected the left over mash is thrown on the compost heap.







We ended up with 18 cups of juice so, according to our recipe, we needed 13 ½ cups of sugar. That’s a lot of sugar! We also needed a little less than ½ a cup of lemon juice near the end and that’s all. Another simple recipe! So after boiling, testing and bottling we ended up with 6 500ml and 8 250ml plus some for the fridge. We might have to get another storage shelf for the basement.

Vacation is over, RATS!!!!!

We had a great time on vacation and I really don't know where to start to describe all the wonderful things we did in two weeks. The new pictures will show you all just how busy we were.

As I wrote in the last post, we started off the first week with making a couple of different kinds of pickles and then we turned those grapes I showed you into jelly. The results came out the best we have every done. Tart, sweet, and they set up just perfectly. We've already finished off two jars, mmm. We used all the grapes but I don't think it will last very long.

We went to visit my Grandmother and brought her a jar of Mustard Pickles. It was a real joy to see her face light up when she tasted it. Thanks Granny, for showing me how to make the best Mustard Pickles in the world.

Ribfest was a great success. We had lots and lots of food and a delicious dessert (Devil's food cupcakes), all shared with the best company and friends anyone could hope to have.

Then we spent a couple of days just hanging out around the house before going away for four days to a rented cottage by the beach. It was perfect, exactly what I was looking for. It was a beautiful property and a pretty little building with vaulted ceilings, wood paneling and a fireplace. Very cosy!

We did a lot in those four days, lots of sightseeing, canoeing (with the seals) and just plain relaxing. I was a little scared about being out on the water with the seals. I was sure that they would come too close and tip over the canoe. Hubby had a great laugh at my expense, yelling "Look out here comes FLIPPER!!!" every time one would pop up it's head. Happily they kept their distance and we made it safely back to shore after a nice paddle around the bay.

It was just a great get-away, and it was made even better when Hubby announced that he had been skimming the household budget every week for the past 4 months. He had managed to squirrrel away enough to pay for the entire trip, including food, drink and lodging! Even the wine we bought at the winery we visited was included, yah! Thankfully, we are not in the Mafia. I'm sure a person could get whacked for doing something like this. Anyway, I'm sure that my mentor for all things finacial, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, would have a laugh over this one. She might have even been proud of us. So yes everything was paid for in full and we also had lots of money left over. So very HAPPY!!!!!!!!! THANKS HUBBY. Love ya, but you already know that.

Well, it's back to work on Monday, but I know I'll be daydreaming of canoeing with the seals and other things to keep the vacation alive as long as possible.

Vacations are great but way too short.

Vacation time

Well it may be vacation time but we're sure not lazying around. It's pickling season and we have been going like crazy because friends of my sister may be able to take a few cases back to T.O. for us. We've made two batches of my Grandmother's Dutch Salad Pickles (we call them mustard pickles and they are a family favourite) and now we have made a second batch of the Hot Curry Relish that I wrote about before.We're still going to make some more of the relish later on when our tomatoes have gotten really ripe. It seems to make a difference, at least in the colour, as the second batch which was made with tomatoes that were very ripe, is a much nicer darker red. Later, we're also going make some jelly from the grapes we have growing on the potting shed and who knows, maybe some pickled beets, too.

I've enclosed some pictures of our handy work. I'm really glad that Hubby loves to help out because it really is a lot of work chopping all the veggies.

I'm also planning my annual dinner party. Rib Fest, yeah! Always seems to be a big hit. I'm planning on decorating the table up with a Fall theme and maybe a few Halloween items thrown in for added fun. I'm just not quite sure about what kind of dessert to make, yet. I'm leaning towards Pumpkin Cheesecake, but chocolate cupcakes with a orange cream cheese icing is calling out to me. I love cupcakes. Hubby just loves icing no matter what it's attached to.

We also have to split up some of the flower beds and rearrange some of the perriennials. The veggie garden needs weeding. I want to also give my leather couch and chair a treatment, I think it may be a little dry looking. The list can go on and on but I really don't what to pile too much on our plates, after all it is supposed to be a VACATION!!!!!

1st Year Anniversary

It's hard to believe that it has already been a year since The Witch's Island went public. With all the stuff that was happening to me and all the things that I have experienced since this time last year I am glad to have had the ability to vent to you, my dedicated reader. Thank you.

Tonight, I am just going to think about what the past year has meant to me. No real blogging, sorry. Instead, I will leave you with some new pictures.

Talk to you all later, my pretties!!


Janice's Hot Curry Relish




Harvest Time




First Pumpkin of the Season!