Sweet Zucchini Pickles

I had a late bumper crop of zucchini and usually I grate it and freeze it for pancakes, but I was on a canning kick, so I decided to try making pickles with them. Zucchini isn't that much different from cucumbers, except that they have way more flavor and can be HUGE!

I got the base recipe from kitchengadgetgirl website. I say base, because I changed it drastically as I am apt to do. Here is my final recipe:

• 1 monster zucchini (the kind that you find in your garden and can't believe that you missed it for so long!), fairly scar/blemish free
  
• 1/2 cup salt in 1/2 gallon water for soaking zucchini
  
• 1 large sweet onion
SAUCE:
• 2 quart apple cider vinegar
• 2-3 cups brown sugar
• 1 Tablespoons turmeric
• 2 teaspoon celery seed
• 6 teaspoons mustard seed

Slice the zucchini and onion thinly, about 1/16-1/8in thick. When you hit the part that has well developed seeds, just pick them out and leave the slice as whole as you can. Soak the zucchini in the salt water for about an hour.

While the zucchini is soaking, sterilize your jars (if you are going to can this), mix the sauce and bring to a boil. Drain the zucchini and mix with the onion slices.

Pack the hot jars with the zucchini/onion mix and pour the sauce into the jar so that it covers the vegetables and leaves a little less than an inch head space (just past the shoulder).

Process the jars for 10 minutes using the hot water bath method.

These were much different than the sweet pickles I usually make and I think I just might like them even more.

Chicken Sum'n Sum'n

I was asking my husband what he wanted for dinner. He said that he didn't know. I said that I could make chicken... er, sum'n sum'n. He laughed and said that I should actually come up with a recipe and call it that.

So I did! And now you too can make chicken sum'n sum'n.

• 1 whole chicken
• 1/2 bottle wine
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 3-4 TBS thyme
• 1 tsp celery seeds
• 1-1/2 TBS sea salt
• 4 TBS pomegranate arils
• 1 medium sweet onion
• 1 tsp ground rosemary

In a stain-free bowl, mix wine, hoisin, thyme, celery seeds, and 1 TBS sea salt. Marinade the whole chicken in this mix for at least an hour.



Place the marinaded chicken in your chicken pan of choice. I used the clay pot cooker, but you could use regular pan or a dutch oven. In a non-clay cooker, I would suggest adding about 1 inch of the marinade to the bottom of the pan to keep the chicken from going dry.

Sprinkle 1 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp ground rosemary over the chicken. Add pomegranate arils and a onion cut into 2 inch pieces into the pan around the chicken.

In the clay pot cooker, I cooked it for two hours at 450F. I'm not sure what it would be in a regular pan: 1-2 hours on 350F? I would cover with tin-foil for first hour if in a regular pan, and then crisp the skin for twenty minutes without tin foil.

When cooked in the clay cooker it is so tender that you can use a fork to get meat off the chicken.

I served this chicken with garlic & rosemary mashed potatoes and a salad made with red lettuce, chopped pecans and the rest of the pomegranate's arils with a fat free honey dijon dressing. Oh Joy!!