A Red Pepper Oldgirl

I like Old school things.

And when I say Old school things, I mean Color Purple Celie Oldschool. types of things.

I like doing stuff they had to do back in the day just for fun...

Stuff like canning!

I only can one thing: red pepper ketchup. I make it every couple of years, so I got the BRIGHT idea to make it the night before I was due back to work (after being off for 12 days).

I haven't been able to find any organic red peppers for some reason. So I found some the other day at $2.99 a pound. (I saw some for $6.99 a pound here and there, but I didn't want to pay that much).

Here's my recipe!

As you can tell, the recipe is well worn, pages all smudged. It looks like one of my grandmas's recipe books.

Or one of Celie's recipe books.

That's Oldschool right there.

Here's my mason jars, justa boiling and sterilizing and boiling away...

Here are my ingredients!

Diced red bell peppers (9 cups), onions (5 cups), garlic and ginger.

Honey, that all took me an hour to cut up. It felt longer than an hour.

Here's my spice mix.

That took about 15 minutes to mix up.  My kitchen stills smells strongly of cloves.

Here's everything cooking and stewing down.

I let that stew for an hour!!

Then I pureed it all in my blender.  I added some light brown sugar and apple cider vinegar and let it cook down for a good hour and I canned it all up.

And here we have it! My red pepper ketchup!

That's good stuff. I didn't finish until one in the morning. My back was on fire from all that standing and stirring. I was not a happy camper the next morning.

But at least I had my ketchup. That's all that matters.

I probably won't make anymore for awhile.

Unless I have another Color Purple Celie moment.