Homemade Antipasto with Homemade Crackers

I love to make antipasto to give as gifts each year.  I can make a big batch at this time of year and tuck it away in the cold room and then I always have some on hand to give as gifts...and it makes quite a popular gift.  I made a batch last week because we were given a bunch of peppers.

I put in olives, onions, cauliflower, green beans, mushrooms, grated carrot and zuchinni (what doesn't she put zucchini in you're asking yourself, right?) and lots of other good stuff.

Make a tomato based sauce and cook it all up.

Then pop it into jars, put it in a hot water bath canner and it is sealed and ready to be put away.

The shelves in the coldroom here aren't super sturdy so at this point I am just tucking jars away into kitchen cupboards.  It's quite fun really because whenever I open up a cupboard I get to see all the goodies I've put by. 

Today I made some crackers because I wanted to use up some sunflower seeds and also so we could use them to sample some of the antipasto.  The recipe I like to use is in a cookbook which is packed away somewhere so I tried out a recipe I found online and then just tweaked it a bit so that I could add lots of seeds.

And did eveyone except me already know that Spider plants bloom? E noticed yesterday that our varigated Spider plant had these flowers on it and then when I went to take a photo I noticed one of our regular ones is also in bloom.  I had no idea they bloomed. 

Fun!  Can't wait to see how my Christmas cactus and our Clivia plant do this year with all the sunlight we get in this house.