Happy Birthday Greg . . . and Canned Cole Slaw? Seriously?

I've been thinking a lot about starting this back up, and I guess it's time I did!   I'm not going to go ahead and rehash all the stuff that's happened in the last two years, so I'm just going to start over, as if I never stopped!  

Today, March 18, 2017, is Greg's 61st birthday!  (Just so you don't think I'm that old, I'm 9 years younger than him!)  It feels odd to be married to someone so old!  I mean, 61!  Really?  What's up with THAT?!   I'm not old enough to be married to someone who's 61! Oh well, it is what it is, right?  After all the health problems he's had, we're pretty darn lucky to even have him around still, so I'm going to stop complaining about having such an old man for a husband and thank God that I DO have an old man for a husband!  Thank you, Jesus!  

Last night, I took him out for dinner to celebrate.  He loves corned beef and cabbage and Friday fish fries, so I thought it would be great to take him someplace that has a buffet with BOTH!  You certainly can't beat that!   We went to a supper club in Marshfield, WI called Belvederes.  It was very good!  We got there around 6 p.m., and were the youngest people there!  Ha! The food was good and we had a very nice time.   The price of the buffet was only $13.95 each!  Can't beat that!  










Today was a busy day for me!  I had seen a post on one of my Facebook Canning Groups about canned Cole Slaw and decided I had to make some with cabbage as inexpensive as it is right now!  (For those that don't know, I've been a bit of a canning nut and have been canning all manner of things from potatoes to mushrooms to baked beans to chicken!)

My dear friend Jessica wanted some, too, so she came over to help.  We had six heads of cabbage that we shredded.  I used my KitchenAid and she used my Salad Shooter.  It actually went pretty quickly.  If anyone is wondering, the KitchenAid worked WAY better!  LOL   In case you didn't know it, six heads of cabbage makes a LOT of shredded cabbage!  We were trying to figure out what to put it all in so we could stir it and mix it up.  I thought my Nesco would be large enough, but noooooooooooooo.  It was in no way anywhere near large enough for all that cabbage!  We went into the basement to see what I had that might be larger and work for food.  Jess saw an older cooler, and we both said THAT'S IT!  We went out to the garage and got one our cooolers.  Jess scrubbed it out good and it was the perfect size!  

The picture above is cabbage, carrots and onions, all shredded.  We did need to break out the food processor to do the onions to get them the right size.  Not a big deal.  I have pretty much all the essential power tools!    

Once we had that all shredded we had to make the brine.  We needed 12 cups of sugar and six cups of vinegar, so I had to find a pot large enough for all that.  I ended up using a vintage pressure cooker that I picked up last year.  I would never use it for pressure cooking, but for cooking this brine, it was perfect!  

It had to cool before we mixed it with the cabbage mixture, so we decided to put it out in the snow to cool! 








We ended up with 30 pints total!  YIKES!  Having never had this Cole slaw before, we sure do hope it's good!  

And just for fun, I gotta ask . . . Can YOU fit a full size cooler in your sink?  I LOVE my farmhouse sink!  I'm pretty sure it's my favorite thing in the entire house!  

In case you're interested, here is the recipe for the Cole slaw -- now mind you, we used SIX heads of cabbage and got 30 pints, so adjust this as necessary for however much you want. We did have to double the syrup recipe to have enough of a "brine" in the jars.  Depending on how much you like celery, you can easily cut the celery seed in half.   It has to sit at least two weeks before we can try it, so keep checking here and I'll be sure to let you know how it tastes!  

Cole Slaw

1 medium head cabbage

1 large carrot

1 red or green pepper (I did not use)

1 small onion

1 teaspoon salt

Syrup

1 cup vinegar

¼ cup water

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon celery seeds

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

Shred together vegetables. Add the salt. Let stand 1 hour.

Drain water from vegetables. (I also rinse and drain.) Boil syrup ingredients together for 1 minute. Cool.

Add syrup to vegetables (or vegetables to the syrup like I did).

Pack into quart jars. (I use pints.)

Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

If you don’t want to can it, you could put it into freezer containers instead and freeze. Leftovers may also be frozen. This slaw may be drained before use and mayonnaise added, or used as is.

I've been told that when you open it, you can rinse it and add mayo if you like a creamy cole slaw, rather than a sweet/sour cole slaw.