jars of carrots

This weekend while Evan and I were in Red Lodge, we ate at one of my favorite restaurants, Mas Taco. They give you a tiny slice of pickled carrot with your entree, like a garish I suppose, but I obviously eat it because pickled anything (besides beets and eggs of course) is my love language. And then Evan gave me his because he is kind and I also ate his slice of pickled carrot. And then I had the idea yesterday that I should pickle my own carrots. Because I had a bag of fresh carrots from my parents' garden and what else was I going to do with them? So, I borrowed my mom's canner, looked up a few recipes and got to it. I was intending on making six jars but then let the vinegar brine boil just a little too long and came up about 1/2 a jar short and because I'm not super great at math, decided to not cut down the brine recipe and just forget the last jar. I also shoved half a jalapeno (or some spicier equivalent) in two of the jars but I'll let those marinate for a few weeks before I open them up for a taste test.

Just having the jars on the counter makes me feel like my cute little mama in all her canning glory. Even though I'll never be as good as she is with her muscle memory for everything and her rows of canned everything you could possibly think of (rosemary lemon dilly beans. horseradish dilly beans. cinnamon spiced pears. spicy tomato soup. tomatoes with peppers and onions. raspberry jalapeno jelly. strawberry rhubarb jam. etc. etc. etc.) and her ability to make 30 different things in an entire weekend and fill up the little room in their basement with 500 jars of goodness and then share everything with me who didn't lift even a finger to help.  So. I'm moving in that direction, only much slower. At about the pace of a sloth. With the equivalent napping schedule as that of a sloth. I'll get there some day. Until then. Cheers to my pickled carrot success.