I love Marisa McClellan’s blog Food In Jars (and was so lucky to take her pear-vanilla jam class last fall – especially since we have pears on our tree for the first time this spring!!)… but I’m still waiting for the first round of spring and summer things to preserve. I’m definitely doubling my jam production from last year – Pearl and her love for PB+Js cleaned me out of my 2011 supply about two weeks ago – and I am so excited to make homemade tomato sauce again.

But both those summery things seem pretty far away on a rainy May afternoon – I’ve been cooking and freezing plenty of things when I have time, but I’m getting impatient to try making something new that feels like spring. So I was super excited to find Marisa’s post on chive blossom vinegar this week! I just dug all my herbs into the ground on Sunday and getting acquainted with them again and cooking with them has been fun. And luckily I had a bottle of white vinegar sitting around, so I could try my hand at a half-half-pint of her recipe!

I also had lots of sage blossoms so I thought I’d go renegade and try a version with those, too. I rinsed them in two small separate bowls, dried them off,

and added the chive blossoms to a half-pint and the sage blossoms to a pint jar and covered them with vinegar. This is what they looked like right after I closed the lids.

And here they are just 24 hours later – the sage especially is a brilliant infused violet color already, very cool!

The chive blossom one has turned a more subtle, softer lavender.

Thirteen days to go and I’ll see how they turn out fully finished… and this weekend I’m heading to the farmer’s market for the first time this year, so I hope this is just the first of lots of chances to can good things in jars, and add new things to my family cookbook!

Speaking of… Marisa has a brand-new FIJ cookbook out I just can’t wait to get, and in addition to a lot of East Coast events, she’ll be teaching a strawberry-lemon jam class at KitchenCru (super recommended) and doing a signing at Powell’s/Pastaworks next month. I have it on my calendar and I’m looking forward to reviewing her book here in the next couple of weeks, too!