I never had any relishes before I came to Australia. I think they are not as prevelant in the States, so I had never tried one before. I find they are quite nice to use as a spread with sandwiches, especially corned beef or lamb. I made a batch today of rhubarb relish today since our garden is getting somewhat overcrowded with rhubarb of late. I thought I would share the recipe here:
4 cups chopped rhubarb
4 cups chopped onion
2 tablespoons salt
pinch pepper
4 cups sugar
2 cups vinegar
Boil together until onion is cooked...
Then thicken with:
2 tablespoons cornflower
1-2 tablespoons curry
Will thicken as cools.
I took a few pictures of the process. As you can see in the third picture, once the onions turn clear you can add the thickener and curry powder. Then let it boil off a while until it thickens a bit more. It usually takes me about 3 hours to cook on the stove on the lowest heating. This batch in the photos are a double batch so the recipe above would make about half as much shown. You don't have to do anything special putting the relish in jars other than make sure the jars are sterile. They will last up to several months in the refrigerator.
Hope you like it!
This is a quilt that I had been trying to finish before I left Michigan, but I was unable to get all the quilting done before leaving. It finally arrived in a box a couple of weeks ago (one year later) so my next project is to finish the quilting on this so I can bind it and be done! The fabrics are from Moda's Seaside Rose collection which are very soft and yummy. They feel and look like soft pajamas. I love the design of this quilt with the diamonds, but now when I look at this quilt the colors don't quite seem right to me. I think the problem is the border, I meant for it to be a blue color, but it had too much pink in it! I didn't change the border even though I suspected it was the wrong one because the quilt store didn't have many fabrics in Seaside Rose left for me to chose from. Oh well, I guess I will just live with it...
I finished the top of the Log Cabin Quilt minus the borders. I don't have enough fabric to sew the borders so I had to order some via ebay. I am excited about this quilt and love the log cabin block! I think the next quilt I make will be using courthouse steps. I've decided to give this quilt to dh, hence the straight furrows layout. I thought that would be a good layout for a farmer! He's actually out plowing right now...
We have been having some nice weather of late with cool nights and hot summer days. It's lovely to have a swim in the river to refresh on days such as these. I thought I would post a picture of our backyard in the sunset last night. It makes me think of "Gone With the Wind."
Wow, already into February. I guess things will be back into full swing soon. I thought I would quickly put together a log cabin quilt from the fabric I purchased just before Christmas. This will be my first log cabin quilt. I guess the variation throughout the quilt will not be very dramatic as I am not using the traditional light-dark value fabrics, but rather just a color variation of blue and brown. I debated for a while what I would use for the center block and in the end have decided to go with a traditional red hearth. I need to sew 81 blocks and as you can see, I already have the strips cut out. Some steady sewing ahead of me!
