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.