John, if you can stoop to buying dried hot peppers, you could get 5 from the bulk section at a natural foods store for the look without much flavor, then use your own powder for the flavor & heat. I used crushed red pepper flakes. For the wine, I used whatever I had. I think in this case it was part of a bottle we hadn't gotten around to finishing, but I also keep one of those four-packs of small bottles in the basement for cooking wine. Normally they say don't cook with it if you wouldn't drink it, but here you're using it for acid, so it's even ok if it's starting to turn. I believe chardonnay would be considered dry for the purposes of this recipe, and I know that is available in the four-packs here. I'm sure white zinfandel will be good too. That's a good price on peeled garlic, not much more than fresh. Next time I'll do that too. Melissa

I agree, leaving whole cloves in the jars, tend to increase the clove taste. Fine if you like that, but usually I remove any before the liquids are added to the jars. Beet greens and their stems are great in a soup, and the stock could be ham hocks too. I like to slice 1/4 inch wide strips of the leaves. They cook up quite fast, and hold their shape if they are not over cooked too much. As mentioned, don't remove all the greens from the beets when cooking, as that tends to make teh beets 'bleed' too much, so they lose a lot of color. Once cooked, I cut off and dispose of that shorth length of greens left on the beets. Its usually where most of the dirt ends up. Also, when spooning the cooked greens out of the pot, try not to disturb the last 1/8 inch of liquid at the bottom, as that too can have some gravel in it. Like spinach, beet greens can get a lot of dirt in those leaves

My favorite recipe, is plain and simple, comes from a book called "Food that Really Schmecks" by Edna Staebler. Boil beets until tender, plunge them into cold water, slip off the skins. If different sized beets are used I cut them into equal sized chunks. Mix the following and bring to a boil. 1 1/2 cups vinegar 2 Cups Sugar 1/2 Cup water 1/2 teaspoon salt Add the beets to the boiled syrup, heat til warm through out, but don't boil them! Drop into sterlized jars, pour syrup over them, cover and process 10 minutes in boiling water bath. Although after reading this thread and the recipe on the NCHFP website I might change the processing time to 30 minutes. As an option I like to add one nice thick slice of onion to the bottom of the jar before I put the beets in. We always fight over the onion! Jenny P

Yup, KatieC, a year. I still have a few of the bulbs from last year's harvest, and I just pulled the last of this year's bulbs yesterday. So, an entire year. They are getting the beginning of green sprouts in the center, which I remove before using the garlic, but the cloves were so nice and big that there is still plenty left after cutting a clove in half and taking out that center sprout. Here I plant in October and harvest the first part of July. So last year's garlic kept from July 2021 until now. Ugh, voles. I did have the squirrels dig up several cloves, but they didn't eat them, and I was lucky enough to check at just the right time and find them lying on the ground scattered about the "garlic patch". I promptly replanted and they were mostly fine. Apparently the squirrels didn't like them after they dug them up. I remember the year you sent me about a dozen varieties. I carefully planted and labelled them, then the girls helped me hang them in the garage to dry. Without a single tag on them, LOL, so I couldn't figure out which one was which. They were all good, though! I tried to attach a picture of this year's harvest, but my internet wouldn't let me. These are my "helpers", who helped harvest this year's garlic. And, of course, Maci had to "pose". That garlic was still covered with dirt, but she thinks she's funny.... Annie