Shed Building Plans

As the title of this post implies, my newly canned pickled asparagus will not be winning any County Fair prizes. Which is fine as the County Fair is two months away. I have plenty of time to pickle some prettier stuff. There is tons of this stuff grown semi-locally that can be picked up on the day it is cut. This particular harvest was "Starting At $.75/ lb". I should have known there was a reason it was so cheap and not just because they cut out the middle man. When I arrived at the packing plant, this was the stuff they couldnt sell to the stores. Still nice looking but not completely uniform. I had planned to can 75 lbs and a friend was to help us and split the bounty. After I saw the "sale" stuff, I settled on 30 lbs. and will do more later. My husband cant stand the idea of tossing out so much good stuff and used the tender stems too. I dont eat a ton of pickled asparagus but he does. If he is willing to eat the stems too, then stems it is. I have to agree, there is an amazing amount of waste if you only go for the pretty tops. We added lots of sliced jalepeno and fresh garlic cloves to the bottom of each jar before we filled them with asparagus spears (and stems). I obviously wasnt the one filling the jars with brine or the one on the right would be full to the proper level. I think my husband was on that duty. It took 3 of us about 2.5 hours to can 18 quarts of this stuff. I sure hope it tastes good.