Roasted Red Peppers

Kroger had red peppers on sale, so I bought ten big, beautiful ones.  I'd never made roasted red peppers before, let alone canned them, so I emailed my Aunt Beverly, who is my go-to person for all things culinary.  She gave me some tips and referred me to a recipe on Simply Recipes, a wonderful recipe blog we both follow. 

First I washed and dried the peppers, then rubbed them lightly with olive oil.  Since I don't have a gas stove I thought I was going to have to change out of my jammies and go outside to grill these suckers, but I soon found out I could roast them quite easily in an old iron skillet.  I just put 3-4 in the skillet at a time and turned them once they were blackened and blistered.  Next time I'll remember to turn on the exhaust fan - the house got smoky really quickly. 
Once each batch of peppers was done I put them in a gallon Ziploc and sealed it.  The steam helps the skin blister up.  I actually left all ten peppers in the bags for a couple of hours while I went shopping, and when I came back the skins came off easily.  At this point you discard the stems, the seeds, and the skin.  Don't rinse if you have little black pieces to get rid of - rub with a paper towel (Beverly's tip).  Then I sliced them up and packed them tightly into 4 hot, sterilized pint jars. 
For the marinade I used the Simply Recipes ingredients, but only made a half batch:
1/2 cup bottled lemon juice
1 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
1 heaping teaspoon shopped garlic
1 1/2 tsp salt
Bring these ingredients to a boil and split the mixture evenly between the four jars.  Use boiling water to fill jars until there is 1/2 inch head space.  Wipe rims dry and put lids and rings on.  Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes or in a pressure cooker for 35 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.
I'll link this one up to The Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap since it is certainly cheaper to make these yourself than buy jars in the store - especially if you grow your own!  And yes, there are only three jars pictured - the other one is already half empty!