Thursday, June 30, 2011

First time Pickles

  With the overwhelming abundance of cucumbers this year, it is only natural that I should try my hand a pickles. I love to eat pickles, as does Isabelle. Andrew can't stand them, and he won't come near me when I am eating them because of the smell. I am still pretty new at the whole canning process, but I think I am doing pretty well with it. My goal is to have lots of preserved food to sustain us through the winter. Usually we spend more on groceries during the winter, but I hope to keep our bill down this year. The recipe I followed was really simple, and the pickles came out wonderful. I got eight pints with this batch, though two of them didn't seal properly. The only thing I can figure is that I didn't get all of the trapped air bubbles out of those and so their wasn't the proper head space. No matter. Pickles can keep for a while in the fridge, so I will use those up of the next couple of weeks. I plan on making a few more batches of pickles and will probably be giving some away, as well as giving away cucumbers. We already traded a bag of them for some homemade raspberry jam from someone Andrew works with, and I've promised pickles to another person in exchange for a gallon of blueberries that I intend to make into jam myself. It's really nice being able to trade the excess of what you have for something you don't have. Much better than just buying everything from the grocery store.

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