In a Pickle

Hello there! It has been far too long since the last post - my apologies. My hope is to manage a post a week and I must try to be better about that. Hope you like the new blue background! I have a thing for chevrons, don't know why.

Cucumber season is in full swing out here, and we are loving it! Our own cucumber seedlings did not do well after transplantation, so I replaced them with seedlings from Waterpenny Farm, purchased at our local farmer's market. They have done marvelously well! We have four pickling cuke plants and two salad plants, although you can certainly use pickling cucumbers for salad in a pinch.

We received notification early this month from our CSA at Waterpenny that they would have bulk cucumbers available for purchase, only for their CSA customers, on a first-come, first serve basis. The cucumbers were 5 lbs for $10 or 10 lbs for $20, with bunches of fresh dill (heads included) for two dollars each. Clearly, they had pickling in mind. So I talked to my friend Amanda, my pickling expert goddess, to see if she was interested. Of course, she said! We put our heads together and determined that for every 10 pounds of cucumbers, we expected to get 6 or 7 quarts of pickles. This didn't sound like much to us, since we a) we planned to split it and b) pickles make great gifts to give away. So in our infinite wisdom, we ordered 20 lbs of cucumbers and two bunches of dill, and planned to make a day of it. "Picklepalooza," I wrote on my calendar.

When the day arrived, we started a bit later than we had planned, since my physical therapy appointment ran long. We had 20 lbs of cucumbers from the CSA, plus 5 lbs harvested from our garden. Amanda came over and while I was at therapy, she started chopping and brining. We planned to make her famous bread & butter pickles, and I wanted to make some dill pickles since they're one of my favorites. Last year I made garlic dills that were good but much too spicy, with not enough dill flavor. But this year, between fresh dill heads and dill seeds, I was more optimistic.

As we worked, it became apparent that we had undertaken a monumental task. I will not say that we bit off more than we could chew, because we are an unstoppable team force of canning and pickling, but 25 lbs is a lot of cucumbers. In case you were wondering. We resorted to using Nick's giant beer stockpots. I texted him a photograph of the stockpot full of cucumbers along with a note saying "We borrowed yer stuff." His response? "Holy crap that's a lot of pickles." And this was only half of them!

Amanda planned to make relish as well. Cucumbers were processed in the food processor to form confetti with onions, bell peppers and celery. While flipping through Amanda's cookbooks, I also came across a recipe for Persian tarragon pickles that I decided I had to try. We had spare cucumbers, and I had tons of unused tarragon growing in the garden. I modified the recipe, taking out the chili peppers to focus on the tarragon and garlic.

This post is not going to go into the nitty-gritty details of precisely how we pickled and processed everything. It doesn't make for a particularly exciting story, and I am not qualified to provide a pickling primer. I did, however, learn a neat trick from Amanda about how to keep your jars from contacting the bottom of the pot if you don't have a special canning insert. Just cover the bottom of the pot with extra lids, and place your jars atop them. Works like a charm! But that's the only fancy detail you get. It's more fun to post things like Amanda posing with her dill bouquet.

We coined a new term for ourselves during Picklepalooza: Midnight Pickles. That's because it took us from about one pm until midnight to actually finish everything. There was a break for dinner prep and eating around 7:30, but then we got back to work! In fact, we did not quite finish all of it before we decided it was bedtime - I processed the very last small batch the next morning. But how many quarts did you get out of your 25 lbs, you ask?

22 3/4 quarts. A wee bit more than we were expecting. In a good way! Exhausting but good.

Aren't these labels cute? I'm obsessed with Avery's free label maker website.
It's easy to use and tons of fun!

So that was Picklepalooza. Next time we might plan a little better (ie. start in the morning). For reference, though...this happened about one and a half weeks ago. In the last week, Nick harvested enough cucumbers from our garden that today I made 12 half-pints and 3 pints more of bread & butter pickles. The plants aren't even close to done yet. Can you say stocking stuffers?

Until next time!