It has been a good summer for pickling.
Thanks to friends; I started following a local family farm on facebook. They publish an ‘event’ on Friday, you ‘join’ it, then, come the next Tuesday, you show up with $10 and a reusable shopping bag and get loaded down with a pretty huge amount of farm fresh veggies and stuff.
The Mystery Bag isn’t really enough to feed Barb or Mira’s families, but for our household of two, I need to get creative…
This Mystery Bag has been turned into pickled green beans, chop pickle, zucchini taco shells, cauliflower ‘Za!, and now, bread and butter banana peppers.
I had thought to use them for a batch of Perky! Pickled Peppers, but my sister had been saying how much she liked bread and butter pickles, so I figured, why not?
INGREDIENTS
•8 cups sliced, seeded banana peppers
•2 jalapeñoes, sliced
•1 green pepper, seeded and diced (about 1 cup)
•1 red pepper, seeded and diced (about 1 cup)
•2 cups diced sweet onion
•3/4 cup canning salt
•3 trays of ice – about 30 cubes
•3 cups white sugar
•3 cups turbinado sugar
•3 cups white vinegar
•3 tbsp mustard seed
•2 tsp celery seed
Combine the peppers, onion and canning salt in a large bowl and top with ice.
Let stand for 2 hours. Rinse and drain well.
In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, vinegar, mustard seed and celery seed. Bring to a boil, stirring just until sugar is dissolved.
Add the drained and rinsed pepper mixture and bring to a boil again. As soon as the peppers have cooked through – when the color of the green and jalapeño peppers goes from bright green to more of an olive – transfer with a slotted spoon to prepared canning jars.
Note: there are several good methods for preparing jars and lids for canning. You could submerge both in a boiling water bath for ten or fifteen minutes; run them through your dishwasher on the ‘sanitize’ setting, or, 
my current fave, arrange the jars and lids, face up, on a baking sheet and pop into a heated 225º oven for 20 minutes, then turn the oven off and leave ’em in the oven until needed. Works a treat.
Cover the peppers with the pickling liquid, then cover the jars and process in a boiling water bath for ten minutes.
Yield: 2 half pints and 2 12 oz jars.
My sister was very happy.