Monday, August 3, 2009

Pickles!!!

I have had a great harvest of cucumbers and tomatoes so far this year, for which I am very grateful. But I was getting kind of tired of eating cucumber and tomato salad. So, I decided I would try to make pickles, of the bread and butter variety. I am not especially fond of dill pickles, Tom doesn't like any type of pickle, and I love sweet pickles but never buy them, so i thought perfect opportunity to make sweet pickles.

My cucumbers are lemon cucumbers. They look very different from your standard cucumber, but taste very similar. I love yellow and think they are cheerful.I searched the internet for a recipe that used ingredients I already had and came up with a fun recipe. It called for salting the cucumbers, chilling them, rinsing them, making a vinegar-sugar-spice syrup, boiling the cukes and canning them. Click here for the original recipe.


Many of the recipes I was finding used "pickling lime" to help make the pickles crispy. Next time, I may try it, but I was happy with the crispness of my pickles just using kosher salt (I didn't have pickling salt, but the recipe said subbing kosher salt is fine). I didn't use all the spices the recipe called for because I didn't have them all. I did use cloves, allspice, mustard seed, red pepper flakes, cinnamon, and then I threw in pickling spice to make up for the ones I was missing. I one and halved the original recipe and got 5 pints.

I am excited that I finally made pickles and may even make another batch with my next big harvest.

6 comments:

Day Family Blog said...

I have never heard of lemon cucumbers, how interesting. I don't like sweet pickles, but they still look good if I imagine they are dill :)

Sharron said...

These are beautiful! I have never heard of the lemon cukes before either. The pickles look yummy. Let us know how they taste when you try them.

I love to maker pickles out of the mini cukers that Costco sells. So far I have just made low salt dills.

Linda said...

Those look delish! Lemon cukes are new to me, but I'm willing to try them. Next time I drive through Hurricane, I'll stop for some pickles! The cake looks yummy as well.

Dansie Family said...

sis. goodman. there will always be pickles or cake or something yummy to eat if ever you want to stop by. next time you are in the neighborhood, let me know.

Jen said...

Those cucumbers are so cool-looking!

Cory Reese said...

I'm with Tom on the pickle issue - but your pictures are awesome!