Time On Our Hands:  Cooking

Mr. G and I make pickles!

Here's Mr. G in August of 2010 stuffing quart jars with cucumbers cut in wedges.  I am posting this now because we are revving up to doing this again very soon--within a week or two.  We are just waiting for the cucumbers to be ripe and ready at Joe's Place Farm a short way from here.  

These pictures are of the first and only time we've made dill pickles together.  I had never done this sort of cooking before.  I still don't do any baking but I do love to cook meals.  That is my thing and it is a big thing!  But in this case I took the lead from my husband on this project.  He'd made pickles before and his sister Kelly gave us her fantastic recipe.  These pickles were so good that we made them last TWO years.  Now it's time to have another go at it because we ran out last week....

  

Here's how we made the pickles which we named Kelly's Wonderful Dill Pickles.  First we washed the jars--about 12 or 15 quart jars--in the dishwasher.  We got our  jars at a garage sale and were able to try different sizes and shapes because we didn't buy a case at the store.  We would prefer to use just wide mouth jars in the future as they were easier to work with.  

We put 4 1/2 quarts of water, 1 1/2 quarter of white vinegar and a cup of salt in a large pot.  That's the brine.  We set it on the large burner and slowly heated it to a boil.

In the meantime we put a washed grape leaf, one clove of chopped or pressed garlic, some dill seed and dill weed in each jar.  We put the lids and rings in a pan with water and brought it to a boil to sterilize them.  

We cut up the cucumbers--there were about 10 pounds of those little pickling cucumbers--and stuffed them into the jars, tight!   Then, using a glass measuring cup and a green canning funnel, we poured the boiling brine into the jars to within 1/2 inch of the top, wiped the rims and put a lid and a ring on each jar.  I let Mr. G tighten the rings since they had to stay very tight.   

For 5 weeks we watched the pickles sit in our garage waiting for them to be ready.  We had to be selfish and not share much since we'd made so few jars--even fewer after a few of the lids popped up before the wait was over indicating they were not sealed correctly and probably bad.  I hope this year we can make twice as many and give some away!

Mr. G told me that we have to use new lids each year so we got some at Walmart a week ago.  Thursday he bought some labels for the jars.  We are working up to the big day!!  Can't wait for our new batch of pickles.