The last of the year's preserving

I really don't know where October went. I just remember summer, in fact I just put the kids slip-n-slide away this week. Wow! I have been busy! So it was to my surprise that my parsley was still green and fresh, despite the hard frosts in the garden. I harvested what I hope to be a full winter's supply.

Plenty of parsley left in the garden

I chopped most of it fine in my food processor with a little olive oil and pressed it into an ice cube tray to freeze. This will be great for winter's meals.The rest  was for parsley jelly. I know, it sounds intriguing, no? Okay maybe not to some but I'm convinced that if you add enough sugar to anything it will taste good. Upon reading this recipe I wondered, what do you eat parsley jelly with? Suggestions were the usual, toast, breads, etc. but there was also a suggestion of meat. Hhhmmm....

So the recipe is pretty simple and you can find several variations on the web. Soaking the parsley in boiling water and then using the strained liquid is the first step. Then adding your sure-jell and sweetener is next. I did use a bit of green food coloring since the liquid is a very faint green.

My boiling green jelly

 Freezing this batch appealed to me since canning would require dragging my canner out, washing jars, heating water, and clean up. Who has time for all that?



The "fruit" of my labor.



Tonight's dinner was shredded BBQ beef, garlic ciabatta bread, and peas. I decided to be brave and try my jelly on my bread with the beef on top AND.........

It was really good!

In my mouth was a sweet and savory flavor burst (my favorite) with the freshness of the parsley cutting through. It is not overly strong but rather a nice compliment to the meat. Test batch passed, so I will be stocking up on english muffins. I always enjoy discovering something new and tasty, especially one that makes use of an overabundance. Now to put away the last of my canning supplies, crack open the canned jewels from summer, and roll out the winter projects.