Zucchini Pickles Recipe,Mail and Male Stitching Challenge.

Hello,

Yesterday I decided to make some zucchini pickles with that giant one we had grown. Like all good cooking shows you can see jar of pickles I made previously!!!! I picked some small capsicum from our bushes growing in the garden and used them in the recipe. I use the recipe from a book I purchased in New Zealand years ago. This is a great book because it tells you how and when to grow things then gives recipes for the produce.

Zucchini Pickle.

1kg zucchini
4 large onions
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1/2 cup salt
2 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups white vinegar
1 cup water
2 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoon celery seed

Chop unpeeled zucchini finely. Peel and chop the onions. Remove the seeds from the peppers and chop the flesh. Combine the vegetables in a large bowl. Sprinkle the salt over the surface and cover with water. Leave for 2 hours. Drain. Rinse thoroughly with cold water and drain again.
In a preserving pan boil the sugar,vinegar,water turmeric and celery seed for 3 minutes. Add the vegetables and cook for 15 minutes. Spoon into hot dry jars and seal.

Now when I have made this I couldn't find celery seeds so I just used a combination herbs and spice mix that I have. It has black peppercorns and other green stuff in it!!! This adds some more flavour. You could chop up whatever herbs you have on hand.

I was lucky enough to be a winner at Jacquelynne's Blog in the Easter Giveaway.
All this lovely material arrived along with the most precious pin. Thank you Jacquelynne. To enter this competition we had to write about someone who has inspired us. I wrote about my year five teacher Mrs Gibson. We used to do embroidery while the boys were outside doing sport. Mrs Gibson had the kindest heart.

Now this months stitching challenge with Anita was to make something for a male. Have you noticed there are very few things in the craft magazines for males. Even with quilts we are a bit restricted. I knew I had to make David something for this project. So when Heidi showed this tutorial for a curling wand/straightener I knew that this would be the perfect project. David has a habit of leaving his hair straightener on the bathroom cupboard and leaving a heat mark. I made it up with some of the material from the Beach Quilt . It has some insul-bright inside it. I changed the dimensions of the material to suit the hair straightener and added some quilting to it. David was really pleased with it and is using it so that is a bonus.

I have nearly finished the cross stitch I have been working on and I am challenging myself to have it finished by this Friday. I hope you are all doing something you love, if not get straight onto it!!!!

Happy days.

Bev C