Pickled Jalapeños and A Painting

 For the first time this year there were fresh jalapeños at the Durham farmer's market (cue dancing in the streets and tossing of the confetti)!!

My husband and I use a ton of pickled jalapeños and have a tough time making a freshly opened jar last very long, so I snatched up all four containers of the jalapeños.  They ended up making 5 pints of pickled jalapeños.  Not bad!

I found a very basic pickled jalapeño recipe where you just pour a vinegar brine over the sliced jalapeños and then put them in a water bath for 5 minutes.  I'm so excited!!  I didn't seed the jalapeños since the pickled jalapeños we buy at the store clearly have all the seeds.  I wonder how spicy these will end up being?

Also, I always follow the instructions for how much headspace to leave when I fill the jars, and I ALWAYS end up with my produce floating up out of the liquid.  What's up with that?  I'll have to do some research and see if there is a way to prevent that from happening.

In other news, I just finished my first painting in many, many years!  I loved painting when I was in school, and was a very.... shall we say 'enthusiastic' artist.

As it happens this week I was wandering around in a Pier 1 store and there was a painting of a tree where the leaves were splatters of paint.  It looked like it would be SO MUCH FUN to make something like that!  I immediately went a few stores down and bought the basic acrylic paint kit and tried to make my very own 'splatter tree'.

I'm not sure what I think of it yet, but I had a great time with the project.  I got one of those 5-packs of the canvas-board, so I'll have to try my hand at something else.