State Fair Quality

Last year at this time I had a friend and her twins (then 10) over for a day of swim and lunch.  This really was one of my daughter's friends from high school, but we had "reconnected" through blogs and Facebook.  The "girls" were cheerleaders together and both were editors of their yearbook (her friend was in the class ahead of my daughter), in a very small high school.  Then they went to the same college.  But K. still lives in the southern part of the county where we lived back then, so it is a far trek to my house.  When she came last summer she brought us each a jar of her jelly that she enters in the State Fair each year (she also is a talented photographer & enters in that area, too.)  The neat thing is that both of her children work on recipes and enter the fair too.  Since K. grew up on a dairy farm, that is just part of her life, and now she is passing it on to her boy and her girl.

Her jellies have won at the State Fair and they are really delicious!  Having a suspicion that she might hopefully would bring some again today, I decided to "prepare" for it and have something to share with her, too.  So I went to Cafe Sucre Farine and found a perfect recipe:

I was finishing up the second batch of Butterflake Dinner Rolls when K. arrived.  The batch makes 12 which would be enough for the 4 of us... But I knew "the kids from next door" were coming to swim with the twins, and I know how much they love bread of any kind.  So I thought I'd better make 2 batches.  They were delicious!!!

Sure enough, K. did not disappoint!  This Southwest Jelly is made from cooking down a lot of cilantro and some jalapeno pepper.  I do NOT like cilantro, but it proves that if you put enough sugar in anything it will be good!  This was SO yummy!  The thing that amazed me was that it has no fruit in it at all.  She said that this was a tester batch because the pectin did not do its job properly, so the solids fell to the bottom.  I'm glad she let us be her "testers" of this sweet little delicacy...  I think she may win prizes at the fair again this year.

Best of all, we just had a great visit and the kids had such a great time in the pool.  It is so sweet to rekindle and hang onto friendships!