Monday, June 16, 2008

pickled

we went down to visit our families this past week. it was so great to reconnect with my family, especially my grandpa. he is doing pretty well, but is immensely missing my grandma.


for those of  you who do not know, my family lives in a rural area surrounded by beautiful land and agriculture. on saturday, some neighbors brought over a large amount of cucumbers to my parents' house for me to make pickles. so, guess what i have been doing for the past two days?


on saturday my mom and i cleaned and cut the cucumbers and soaked them in pickling lime. yesterday my dad did the second, third and fourth washing and sent them on their way, in an ice water bath, to my house for my mom and me to finish the job, since she was coming back up with us to visit a few days. here they are all soaked and ready to pickle...
beautiful pickling spices about to be tied up in a coffee filter to add to the vinegar/sugar mix to boil...
pickling away (the whole house smells like apple cider vinegar at this point)...
and, yay! three of the nineteen jars of sweet pickles my mom and i canned today...

now, i must say, making jam is a lot easier than canning pickles. i do not have a pot big enough to do the whole batch, so we had to make four small batches and my kitchen was sooo sticky! and would you believe that i mopped the whole house this morning, only to re-mop the kitchen? oh, and would you believe that while we were boiling pickles, i had to make lunch and in the middle of cooking it, the oven stopped working? yes. but, have no fear. we survived and so did the oven. and i would do it again, just not today.

15 comments:

girl on a roof said...

That sounds so fun...and I don't even like pickles! I'm with Danny's family today. I wanted to pick blueberries. But no one wanted to join me in the heat.We went to the local farmers' market.

kristi said...

i love the picture of all the spices in the coffee filter. that's my favorite. hopefully you have worked the vinegar smell out of your kitchen by now and are enjoying a nice, relaxing evening. :)

Cowboys and Custard Mercantile said...

Hello Amy.. I LOVE pickles and I am positively salivating at the sight of all those delicious jars of your cucumber pickles...
When I was expecting my son.. I had a craving for pickles and ate rather a lot of pickled herrings!
Maybe that is why we named our cat Pickles... but not my son..

Love
Michelex

deborah said...

They sure looked good. I wish I could have been there to watch I mean help. What I really would have liked to have seen is you guys transporting the pickles. Brings back memories. Hope to see you soon.
Love Aunt Deborah

Jessica said...

Those looks so yummy! I love pictures of canned and pickeled goodness! Now if we could only open a jar and eat some!

Stephanie Breuner said...

the pic of the unpickled cucumbers is the same color green as the little elf/fairy on your blog header. Thought I would point that out while they are still together at the top of the page

Dana said...

Yum! Wanna share your recipe? I usually make bread and butter pickles but have never tried sweet. :)

beki said...

Yum! That brings back memories. I wa shoping to make som epickles from my cucumbers this year, but it turns out that I bought english cucumbers, and they're already petered out.

Elizabeth said...

nothing like fresh canned pickles! Yummy :)

Barbara said...

I can just smell that vinegar and spice - I don't think there's any smell that I like more! Those pickles look wonderful!

Anonymous said...

Hi Amy....you do such wonderful things ! Sounds like a lot of fun and a really nice way to connect with family - all working towards a common goal - pickles!
I too was obsessed with eating pickles during my first pregnancy (beetroot though). Glad your Grandpa is bearing up.......asti x

Anonymous said...

i can't wait to try the pickles...i'm a lucky chick because i have one FULL jar in my fridge waiting to be devoured.

Anonymous said...

oh! I love homemade pickles. They're sooo good.

Anonymous said...

That whole process looks so interesting! Lovely pickles! I want to learn to do some kinds of canning this summer!

the fabled needle (jen) said...

yum, i love pickles and i bet homemade are the best!

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