THE BEST Spicy Dill Beans!! (Tutorial w/ pics)

Helllooooo! This blog is going to walk you through how to make spicy, garlicky, delicious DILL BEANS, right in your own kitchen. These beans are excellent served as a garnish for a Caesar or Bloody Mary, or in any place you would have a dill pickle (like the back of a Volkswagen.) I like to just eat them right out of the jar and feel the burn in my mouth. Anyway, they are very, very good, and very, very strong. Eat them at your own risk.

Can properly to avoid giving your friends and family botulism.
Seriously.

I won't go into HOW to can things, cause there are sooooo many places you can go to find that, and if you're looking for canning recipes, I'm betting you know how already, anyway.

FWIW, this is my set up: jar boiler on the back left, lid heater on the back right, and my good ol' cooking pot front left and easy to access. I also keep a boiled kettle for when I need to top up the jar water.

Big bunch of beans! Obviously wash them first.

Start with about this many green beans - aka a big pile. This is about 4lbs, purchased for around $8 from my favourite local farm store and U-pick in London - Thomas Brothers Farm Market. It's located on Col. Talbot Rd. between London & St. Thomas - just past the 401. There is always tons of local seasonal produce for cheap cheap cheap! If you don't live near here, sorry for you :(

Wine and decorative watermelon are optional.

Next, assemble your spices! For these spicy beans, you will need dill seed, mustard seed, crushed red pepper flakes, and (ideally locally grown Ontario) garlic cloves.

Aerial view

Once your jars are processed (boiled for at least 10 minutes) - take them out of the water and add to each jar:

1/2 tsp dill seed
1/2 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 whole clove of garlic (use a small or half-clove if you aren't a fan of garlic as a dominant flavour.)

The beans are in their home, now

Then, shove the beans all vertical-like into the jars. You can cut the nibs off if you want or need to. They will shrink a little, float, and soften up once they pickle, so pack 'em in tight, and don't worry if some of the tips touch the lids when you seal them.

It's lidding time!

Once the beans are in their final-resting-place jars, bring to a boil:

5 cups of white vinegar
5 cups of water
1/2 cup of salt (ideally pickling salt, but Kosher salt will work okay, too - just want to steer clear of salt with iodine or anti-clumping agents added)

Pour that liquid gold over your beautiful beans, to 1/4 inch from the lip of the jar. The beans will float, and that is just fine.

The only beans that did not get canned.
I ate them right after I took this pic.

Lid and ring those bad boys, then process them in your boiling water for 15 minutes. Remove and let cool. They will be best after 2 weeks or so, but I opened the first jar from this batch after only one week, and it was still pretty good.

Your beans are now shelf-stable for at least 1 year, but I'm betting there's no way they'll last that long!

Think of the plants...

Don't forget to compost your bean-ends and paper towels!

The finished product!!! Congratulations on a job well done! You are a culinary god/goddess! Go get yourself some more wine!








What are your favourite things to can? Do you have any questions about this recipe or the canning process? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading! xoxo

Chevron Ombre Nail Tutorial

Happy February!

It's never too early for a Valentine's Day mani, amirite? This one was inspired by Pinterest, and it's pretty much identical, except with less perfect lines and slightly different colours...

Anyway, here's the end result (minus cuticle clean-up):

Probably needs one more coat of Seche, also

I think it would work well with any colour group, but the pinks/reds are good for this particular season.

It's pretty easy, and you could probably guess how I did it without reading any further, but I need to write a blog right now, and so here we go...

The wine is my Constant. #Lost

These are the items I used:

1. PURE ACETONE remover - don't EVER settle for anything less
2. Skinny long craft paintbrush
3. Jackson-Triggs Cabernet Sauvignon, preferably from box
4. China Glaze Tinsel Town (sparkly charcoal)
5. Essie Fishnet Stockings (red)
6. Essie Mod Square (medium pink)
7. Essie Good Morning Hope (pale pink)
8. China Glaze Platinum Pearl (shimmery white base) (not pictured for some reason.)

Don't forget to use a good base coat first, obvi

Begin by selecting which nails will get which design. The thumb is always a toss-up. I've decided to make it decorative, but I might have had too much wine. It's your choice, really. For this mani, the pinkie and index fingers will be the neutral, grounding influences.

Do your bases, then 2 coats of the lightest colour in chevron form. If you screw it up, that's okay. This is a very forgiving design, with lots of opportunity to cover up errors in later stages.

This pink is probably my favourite colour ever

Now, take that medium colour, and get a chevron out of it!!

I went over each chevron 2-3 times for opacity reasons...

If you couldn't guess this next step, you need to drink less

That's right! Add that 3rd chevron, in your darkest colour...just do it. Do it now.

My favourite step

Next, you're going to make a little puddle of the colour you're using to outline on a magazine, and get that skinny brush out, and paint thin dividing lines between your chevrons.

Remember that most people will be looking at this from a distance of 1 metre or greater (as opposed to an ECU on a blog tutorial), so it's okay if it's not perfect. It will look good, I promise.

Also, don't hesitate to use a new blob of polish for each nail. It's important that the polish is not set AT ALL to get it to transfer smoothly from the brush to the nail. Go ahead, be wasteful. If you get cheap with this, you run the risk of blobby, hideous lines. Don't be that girl.

Top coat is trickier than it looks, especially with that deep red up top.

Finally, you need to add 2 coats of the wonder product, fast-dry top-coat, that is Seche Vite.

Make the first one really blobby, and be careful not to transfer the darker colour at the top onto the lighter colours at the bottom. The next coat can be used with pressure to smooth everything out.

Seche is ideally applied while your nails are still slightly wet or tacky. I don't know why, but it seems to bond with the wet polish? Anyway, it sets in about 60 seconds and provides the best shine of any top-coat I've ever tried.

Ta-da!!! That's it! An easy and fun project that looks cute, too.

What are your favourite designs for Valentine's Day? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading! xoxo