Made CITR refrigerator pickles with cute 'baby' cucumbers. They're just tall enough to fit in a quart jar. Sliced them in half lengthwise. Can anyone explain to me why they shrunk, considerably, overnight? The jars were nice and packed when I finished. The next morning the shortened pickles were free-swimming.

Beautiful jelly Buckeye girl!

Yesterday I cooked a bunch of chicken backs, necks, wing tips, etc that I'd had in the freezer after processing chickens earlier this summer.  Yielded 22 pints of chicken broth which I canned this morning.

I also had the SJ full of cherry tomatoes and what few others were ripe.  That yielded 4 quarts of tomato water and 8 pints of pulp for tomato ketchup. 

Put up 9 half-pints and 1 4oz jar of diced pimientos which is about the right amount for a year here.  I use those by the tablespoon mainly for adding color and a little flavor boost to casseroles, cream cheese spreads and chicken salads.  When I want more flavor I use roasted red peppers, pickled peppers like pepperoncini or banana peppers and hot peppers like bird or cayenne peppers which are most often dried.  Just because I had several yellow bells picked but with no other purpose in sight, I processed them the same way as the pimientos.  Very pretty in the jars.

Then DH came in with a bowl of thai dragon peppers and another of serrano peppers.  He's been wanting to make more hot pepper sauce so we cut the stems off and put them in a pan with almost 2 quarts of white vinegar, a little salt and some garlic.  Cooked for 30 minutes, let cool till the liquid was easier to handle, then pureed everything in the vitamix, strained and bottled it for later.  Maybe a couple of months — by Christmas it will be at it's best.  Problem is keeping DH out of it till then.