Wednesday, August 24, 2011

It's Pickle Time!

Our garden is overflowing with the tomatoes, jalapeno's, anaheim chilies, cucumbers, basil, mint, rosemary and thyme, what to do with all these yummy treats?  One option is to make pickles with the pickling cucumbers that I planted.  The regular cucumbers get eaten as soon as they are ripe, I admit I am addicted to cucumbers, as soon as they are ripe, I pick them, slice them up and eat them, delicious.  Well, I was looking around for a pickle recipe and found one in my grandma's Armstrong Ladies Aid Cookbook and it just so happens that it was her sister's recipe, my Aunt Edna.  These are dill pickles, pretty simple, but I added some pepper corns and fresh garlic just to spice it up a bit.  They have to sit for a couple of weeks before I can try them, but they look pretty good to me.

First, you have to pick the cucumbers and wash them:

Then, you need to cut the ends off and cut up the cucumbers (I did spears and slices):

When they are all cut up it's time to pack them into the sterilized jars with the fresh dill, garlic and pepper corns:

Now, it's time to mix the vinegar, water and pickling salt together and fill each of the jars:

Once the jars are filled, lids are put on and the bands are tightened, process them in boiling water for about 10 minutes to seal the lids and voila! Fresh pickles!

Every year I feel the need to purge my life of any excess junk that is hanging around and every year my sister, my mom and cousin Carol come over and we have a huge yard sale (this year a realtor came by and wanted to know if I was moving, I guess we have a lot of junk).  Tom made breakfast burrito's, we should have sold them, they tasted so good and Carol always makes taco dip (Carol makes THE BEST taco dip), I think we are going on about 6 or 7 years that we have been doing this, it's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work.  We always ask the same question, where did we have all this stuff?  When all is said and done, we load up all the goodies that haven't sold and take them to the Goodwill truck.
Tom wanted to try on one of cousin Carol's necklaces that was for sale (that is my garden over Tom's shoulder, crazy huh?).

That is my grandma on the right and her sister, Edna on the left