In a Pickle Now

The Hippy Librarian and I were reading over the seed packets for our garden the other day. The Bush Cucumber, which is the standard green cucumber we are growing, is described as a 'good' producer. The white cucumber we are growing is described as a 'very good' producer. We thought this was a pretty good explanation as to why we're been picking somewhere around 10 pounds of cucumbers a week. And things have barely just started.

Since we were blessed with this bounty of cucumbers, and half of them were lying in our fridge, slowly rotting, we decided it was time to act. So what to do with a ton of cucumber? Why, make pickles, of course.

A couple years back, Kimberly, her mom, Sissy, and I made Spicy Dill Green Bean Pickles. Besides some early memories of my family canning tomatoes in the Old Country when I was young, I had never preserved foods in this way before. It was surprisingly fun. When we left Portland, Mom-K was kind enough to supply us with a canning pot, which is basically the giant-ist pot possible, with a metal rack in the bottom for raising and lowering the jars.

With the aid of the Hippy Librarian and the Iowa Farm Boy, and of course, the Ball Corporation Bible of Canning, we went at it. It was surprisingly easy to do - wash some stuff, cut some stuff, follow a recipe, cook the jars for a while. Since I was in charge, we made Dill Slices with the green cucumbers, perfect for burgers and sandwiches and such. We ended up with 6 pints.

Since we still had a ton of the white cucumbers left the next day, Kimberly and I decided we might as well pickle them too, so they don't just go bad. 6 more pints.


So, as you can see, we now have 12 jars of Dill Pickles. Hippy Librarian and Iowa Farm Boy will be taking some, but we'll probably end up with the majority of them. But that's fine with me, because I love me some Dill Pickles.