pickles

well, if you're looking for excitement, you're not gonna find it here...

but what we do have is pickles. and cucumbers. and more cucumbers.

these buggers just spring up overnight. actually quicker than overnight. and they hide. they make you believe that you're losing it when you check the whole patch in the morning, pick everything that's ready, go back in the evening & find a monster sized cucumber. i mean, nasty big...if there is such a thing.

and they are only surpassed by their friendly neighbor the zucchini. once again, those things hide on you and before you know it, you have a monster that no one is going to use for anything except the compost pile.

but i'm getting carried away.

here are some of my pickles. bread & butter on the left, dill on the right.

bread & butter pickles

4 quarts sliced medium cucumbers
8 sliced medium white onions
1/3 c. pickling salt
3 cloves garlic, halved
5 c. sugar
3 c. cider vinegar
2 Tbs. mustard seed
1 1/2 tsp. turmeric
1 1/2 tsp. celery seed
ice

in large bowl, combine cucumbers, onions, salt & garlic. stir in a large amount of ice. let stand 3 hours; drain well. remove garlic. in large kettle, combine sugar, vinegar, mustard seed, turmeric, and celery seed. add drained pickles & onions. bring to boiling. pack cucumber mixture & liquid into hot, sterilized pint jars, leaving a 1/2" headspace. adjust lids. process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes. makes 8 pints. (80 servings)

*i follow this recipe pretty much exactly, except maybe not using as much onion. think this year i only used 5-6. kind of guage it on the size of the onions. also, i use yellow onions if i don't have white ones on hand.

dill pickles

8 lbs. 4-5" long pickling cucumbers (around 40 is enough for this recipe)
7 garlic cloves, cut in half
14 med. size heads of fresh dill
14 sprigs from fresh dill
4 c. white vinegar
12 c. water
2/3 c. pickling salt
ice

place clean cucumbers in tub of ice water for at least 2 hrs, no more than 8 hrs. get 14 pint jars ready. combine vinegar, water & salt over med-high heat to boiling or salt is dissolved. place a half of garlic, head & sprig of dill in bottom of each jar. pack jars with cucumbers, add hot brine leaving at least 1/4" headspace. seal jars & process in boiling water bath 10 mins. store at least 8 wks before eating. should keep 2 yrs if kept cool & dry.

*i wrote this for pint jars. this would also be the correct amount for 7 quart jars. actually, the brine will make enough for a bit more, but that never works for me as my canners all hold either 7 pints or 7 quarts. the brine makes for an extra quart or 2 extra pints. quarts would process 15 mins.

now, go & pickle till your heart's content!

canning & freezing in full swing

it starts with the strawberries in late may or early june. and it's so exciting to see those strawberries on the plants. it's like a wake up to summer.

i make some jam, i freeze some berries & we eat lots of strawberries & favorite strawberry dishes like shortcake & pie. we are part strawberry for the month of june!

there's a short reprieve while we enjoy some radishes, some lettuce & maybe a few onions.

then it all goes crazy. life begins to be planned around what needs to be done in the garden.

and so i have a love hate relationship with gardening & canning.

i love the we can grow our own food, harvest it & keep it for the coming year.

i hate that it takes time. precious time that i give during my summer... summer that goes by so quickly...my break from being a home schooling mom. i need that break from school probably as much or more than my kids do!

gardening, canning & freezing definitely take time. i enjoy being busy, but the busier i am, the quicker the time seems to fly by.

so enough of my rant. i am thankful. and hopeful. and praying that my beans are going to do better than they seem to be doing right now. beans are important to us. we were fortunate last year to have an incredible turn out and we put up enough to eat them at least a couple times a week for an entire year.

and i am super excited to have picked & frozen 35 lbs of blueberries last week! yes, 35 lbs! this is the most i have ever put up, so i will be happy to let my boys eat blueberries without worrying about running out of them early next year!

*******

now, this here part of the post is for my friend shannan & any of you looking into planting cucumbers for pickling.

we put up a lot of pickles.

• dill
• sweet garlic dill
• bread & butter

i think we have discovered that we eat more of the dill than anything, so we will do more of them than we have in the past.

we plant 2 kinds of cucumbers: "sweet slice" & "national pickling"

you all know what the sweet slice look like. pretty much what you see in the store for cucumbers. they're long and green with smooth shiny skin. they turn yellow when they're too ripe. we just cut these up & eat them. by the plateful. they're yummy.

the national pickling are my favorite little pickle. we use them for pickling. there's something endearing about them, if a cucumber can possibly be endearing. i think of them when i think of a claussen pickle for some reason.

*and oh...by the way, there's an ongoing discussion at our house as to whether or not you should call them cucumbers or pickles before they have actually been "pickled". some say one, some say the other, but mostly some are just being smart alecs when they act like they don't know what we're talking about when we say "you need to go out and get some pickles from the garden..."☺


these guys are cute, they're smallish...about this long...

i try not to let them get too long because i like to cut then into spears or half by length to fit into pint jars. and you don't have to worry because if they get much longer than that, they just get fatter around and not so much longer, and they're usually over-ripe by that time. sometimes i pick them pretty small if i want to pickle them whole in quart jars.

and they look like this when you slice them across...

which i do for bread & butter pickles, or chucks of any other kind of pickle. i like how they are 3 sided, but i notice if you let them get a bit bigger, they will puff up and have 4 sides. i like to keep them right about here.

i started growing my own dill last year since it only made sense & since dill is perennial, it's an added plus. and actually if you accidentally till it up (hi honey!) it will probably come right back up...ours did anyway. it's pretty tough stuff.

so i'm off to make some dill pickles. if i find the time, i'll post some recipes with the finished product.

happy canning!

how does your garden grow?

around here, we are getting into the gardening spirit...

we have onions, radishes & peas coming up (yay!) & we planted lettuce this past weekend.

this is our 4th year of "serious" gardening & canning. it's something we look forward to every spring. we work on this as a family & it's good for all of us. (minus the whining & complaining)

we learn something new each year... for instance:

• planting tomatoes in april is not a real good idea
• there really is such a thing as "too much of a good thing" when it comes to fertilizer
• being "tiller happy" can be bad for your perennials (goodbye asparagus & dill)
• spraying round-up on your strawberry beds because it will kill the weeds but not the strawberry plants is not actually true
• it's not worth it to plant leftover seeds from last year, especially if it's 8 rows of beans that you're going to have to replant anyway
• don't worry about your zucchini seeds starting, they ALWAYS come up

this weekend we piled into the car & went out to our favorite local gardening shop, country garden greenhouses over near cr 46 & cr 15 (it's a new paris address) to buy seeds ...just in case there's a shortage this year.

we got our bean, corn, cucumber & zucchini seeds & a few more onion starts because you never know... the 250 that we already have in the ground just might not be enough!

we'll wait a while yet to buy our plants (tomatoes, peppers, etc.) and plant them later in may. we've found that memorial day is a safe time to plant tomatoes without having to really fuss over them, so we'll do most of our seed planting before that, then tomatoes & picky things last.

canning (and freezing) has been hugely rewarding for us & has probably saved us more this past year than ever before. it does become a big job once summer is here, but we never regret it once all winter long.

so with planting & fresh fruits & veggies in mind, i am posting a recipe for something i made this weekend with some frozen zucchini from last summer's crop.

these zucchini brownies are so delicious, i think i'm going to go get one now & eat it while i write this up...

ok, i'm back...these are so good, my fingers are sticky & going to make a mess all over my keyboard, oh well...

zucchini brownies
1/2 c. oil
1 1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
2 c. flour
1/2 c. cocoa
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 c. shredded zucchini
1/2 c. chopped walnuts, optional
+chocolate buttercream frosting if you really like to "rich" it up

preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease 9 x 13" pan. in large bowl, mix oil, sugar & vanilla. combine dry ingredients & stir into sugar mixture. fold in zucchini & nuts. spread evenly into pan. bake 25 minutes or until brownies spring back when touched, then they're done.

*these are more cake-like than heavy fudge-like brownies. try them, they're so good, i know that you'll like them!

ps, if you are going to freeze zucchini for something like this where you need it to be shredded, shred it first, then freeze it. i figured this out the hard way!