We Put Lids On Things

The first canning class chez English went off without a hitch this past Saturday. Ten lovely ladies made the trek out here to watch me steam it up over a boiling water bath.

We took some of the finest, ripest, sweetest, juiciest peaches South Carolina has to offer and rendered them into spiced peach jam. To cool ourselves in my hot kitchen, we sipped on Hubs' delicious lemonade and water infused with cucumber slices from our garden.

Afterwards, we moved the party outdoors to the patio and noshed and chatted. We tried to use as much produce from our garden and goods from our pantry in the meal as possible. Here's what we offered the guests:

*Orecchiette pasta with homemade pesto, cremini mushrooms & types of summer squash

*Fresh mozzarella with heirloom tomato slices & fresh basil

*Mesclun greens with blueberries & fresh figs tossed with a homemade vinaigrette

*Herbed pickled asparagus spears wrapped with ham slices (the pickled asparagus recipe is from my book)

*Farm & Sparrow Market bread

*Pickled beets

*Pickled Chinese 5-spice cherries

And for dessert, my sisters that were visiting helped me whip up a Peach Crisp with candied lemon verbena (Hubs genius idea) and lemon verbena infused whipped cream (my most favorite means of enjoying lemon verbena ever).

It was a truly wonderful afternoon. Thank you to all who ventured out here. And a river of gratitude to Michelle and Heather for their blog posts about the event (Michelle's photo montage is seriously magazine worthy!).

Soon I'll be making a post about other upcoming classes, including: bread-making, home dairy, and chicken-keeping. Also, I'd love to know what you'd like to learn. Any bee in your bonnet you're itching to learn more about?