Spicy carrot pickle

I have your book Growing and Canning Your Own Food, and your other books, but can’t find a spicy carrot pickle recipe. Maybe you have one? Maybe something with onions and jalapenos? I absolutely love all your recipes and actually learned how to can from your book!

Draza and Regina
Miramonte, California

Here’s our favorite spiced carrot recipe, a carrot relish you can even eat as a side dish.

3 lbs carrots (12 medium)
5 medium green peppers
4 red jalapenos
6 medium onions
6 cups white vinegar
2 Tbsp. celery seed
¼ cup salt
6 cups sugar

Clean carrots and peel. Remove ribs and seeds from peppers, peel onions. Put all vegetables through a food chopper using a coarse blade. In a kettle, heat vinegar, spices, and sugar to boiling. Add ground vegetables. Simmer for 20 minutes. Pack while boiling into hot jars, leaving ¼ inch of head space. Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. (This will make 8 half pints.) Hope you like this recipe. — Jackie

Pine nuts

First I would like to say I love reading your articles. I have used many of your recipes. My wife and I recently went up to the mountains and picked about a gallon of pine nuts. I read how good they are for you and noticed they are $20 a pound at our local health food store. I would like to know a little more about them and if you have any recipes.

Richard
Grand Junction, Colorado

Lucky you, Richard. I just love pinyon nuts. In New Mexico, we used to go up to the mountains and harvest them, making a picnic outing of it. You can shell and eat them raw but we liked to toast them. To toast them, you can either lay them in a single layer (shelled) on a cookie sheet and toast them in the oven at low temperature, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes or soak them in water, drain, then sprinkle with salt. Then roast them as above. Pinyons (or pinyon nuts) are excellent in salads and vital for pesto sauce. They are a traditional great with lamb, veal, pork, chicken, fish, duck, and game birds. Pinyon nuts are also popular in stuffings, sauces, vegetables, soups, pesto, stews, sweetmeats, cakes, and puddings. I really liked to add them to simple sugar cookies. — Jackie