Making Pickles

Even though my garden is pretty much of a failure this year, I grew lots of artichokes, lots of asparagus, the yacon looks great, although it’s a root crop and it may all be rotted underground. The best news is . . I have never been able to successfully grow cucumbers and this year. Last year a friend from home sent me cucumber seeds and said “you CAN grow cucumbers from these”. They are National Pickling Cucumbers and sure enough . . I’m growing cukes!

I didn’t plant many seeds . . I don’t know why . . I guess because I only had one trellis but now that the peas are done, I planted a few more cucumbers. It may be too late, the grasshoppers may be too hungry, it may be too hot but I have plenty of seeds so . . what do I have to lose?

I’m trying out a bunch of different pickle recipes to see which ones I like the best and I’m keeping a chart so I’ll know which ones were from which recipe and which ones had grape leaves and which ones had Pickle Crisp added. Grape leaves are supposed to keep them crunchy. It will be a summer of pickle making trials! Hopefully some of them will be delicious . . and crunchy!

The first recipe I tried was Easy Dill Pickles.

I used just the one recipe and made it exactly as shown but you can see that the jar lids are labeled. Here’s what I did:

• 1a – These were two small cucumbers I picked this morning and didn’t soak for 12 hours in salt water . . just to see what happens. I did add a grape leaf and Pickle Crisp to the jar.
• 1b – A grape leaf and Pickle Crisp were added.
• 1c – A grape leaf was added but Pickle Crisp.
• 1d – Only Pickle Crisp was added – no grape leaf.

We’ll see if we can tell any difference in the variations.

Speaking of pickles, our new United grocery store opened this week and I went yesterday. What a grocery store! They were sampling these — their store brand pickles with horseradish. Oh, my! These pickles are amazing and I’m going to go put them in the shop fridge so I don’t blow my diet on pickles!

Once I get a pickle recipe that I like, maybe I can experiment a bit and come close to this. They’re a little pricey . . especially considering that I can now grow my own cucumbers thanks to my friend, Bruce!