Red Pepper Jelly "Bee"

Last Thursday night, I went over to a friend”s house in the country for a little “Red Pepper Bee”. My friend Karen invited me to join herself and a few other ladies to make some Red Pepper Jelly. Well, it was for sure a fun night! Lots of laughs and many things learned. For instance, there is more than one way to make Red Pepper Jelly. In fact, there are hundreds of recipes available online to make this sweet and hot concoction. We had a go at making three different recipes that Karen had found online and for the record, one of them failed completely! It”s taste was on, but its consistency was way off the mark – it was, liquid rather than jell-like. The beauty of a failure in canning, cooking and even baking is that you can usually salvage something wonderful from the wreckage. I took home six small jars of jelly from the night of canning and only one of them set correctly. The others? Well, I marinated 3 pork tenderloins for some friends on the weekend in the gooey disaster and it was delicious! The picture above is of the one jar that set wonderfully and I can”t wait to crack it open in December and spread it over some cheese…yum! Red peppers are readily available at all the farmers markets right now. As with many fruits and vegetables this year, the season was a little late but there should be lots coming in now.  Read More