Pickles
I'm making LOTS of pickles this weekend. I have four days off - the company I work for is closed both Monday and Tuesday. They always put one of our "floating" holidays with July 4th and the other at Christmas time - adjusting the date each year depending on where in the week the actual holiday falls.
I had gathered enough cucumbers from my plants to make a batch of sliced Sweet Pickles - a recipe I found last year but had not tried yet. Then yesterday I went to the C-Street Farmer's Market, and one of the vendors had a bunch of lovely big, fat cucumbers that would be perfect for making Cinnamon Stick Pickles. I set out a stack that I thought would be about what I would need for the batch of pickles, 24 cucumbers. Chris had them priced at 50 cents each - I asked her if she could make me a deal if I bought that whole stack. She said she would call John (her husband) and ask. I was hoping for maybe $10 instead of $12, but John said $9! So I bought them all.
I should have asked Chris to weigh them for me, but even that might not have helped. I didn't look at the weight I wrote on my recipe last year before I went to the market, because I wasn't planning to buy any cucumbers. Needless to say, I WAY overestimated how many cukes I needed for the Cinnamon Pickles. I use the 10 largest. Yeah....
Yesterday, I sliced all the cukes from my plants, and made sticks from the 10 big cucumbers, putting both batches to soak in lime water. Today I rinsed the slices, soaked them in ice water for 3 hours, made the syrup, and now they are soaking in it. They will be ready to put in jars tomorrow - or tonight around 10 p.m., but I have decided tomorrow.
Tonight I need to drain the lime water off the sticks, rinse them good, and put them to soak in clear water overnight. Tomorrow they will need to simmer in water with alum and food coloring (they come out a beautiful red), then be drained again and go into their syrup. Then three days of once a day draining the syrup off, bringing it to a boil and pouring it back on...and on Saturday, I can put them in jars! Cinnamon Pickles are a lot of work, but oh, they are so tasty!
All day I have been trying to decide what kind of pickles to make with the rest of the cucumbers. I want to make some more with a recipe I used last year called Old Timey Pickles and I want to make more Bread & Butter Pickles. These recipes don't take nearly so long - it is a one day process, no overnight soaking. But they doesn't make very many, so would not use all of the cukes. Also, they are supposed to be sliced, and the big fat cukes need the seeds cut out - they are mature enough that they are not tender. I'm thinking about maybe cutting them into chunks instead of slices. Maybe I will chuck the cukes and make one batch of each. Hmmm. Can I manage this tomorrow? We shall see. I may be pickled out before I am done.
I had gathered enough cucumbers from my plants to make a batch of sliced Sweet Pickles - a recipe I found last year but had not tried yet. Then yesterday I went to the C-Street Farmer's Market, and one of the vendors had a bunch of lovely big, fat cucumbers that would be perfect for making Cinnamon Stick Pickles. I set out a stack that I thought would be about what I would need for the batch of pickles, 24 cucumbers. Chris had them priced at 50 cents each - I asked her if she could make me a deal if I bought that whole stack. She said she would call John (her husband) and ask. I was hoping for maybe $10 instead of $12, but John said $9! So I bought them all.
I should have asked Chris to weigh them for me, but even that might not have helped. I didn't look at the weight I wrote on my recipe last year before I went to the market, because I wasn't planning to buy any cucumbers. Needless to say, I WAY overestimated how many cukes I needed for the Cinnamon Pickles. I use the 10 largest. Yeah....
Yesterday, I sliced all the cukes from my plants, and made sticks from the 10 big cucumbers, putting both batches to soak in lime water. Today I rinsed the slices, soaked them in ice water for 3 hours, made the syrup, and now they are soaking in it. They will be ready to put in jars tomorrow - or tonight around 10 p.m., but I have decided tomorrow.
Tonight I need to drain the lime water off the sticks, rinse them good, and put them to soak in clear water overnight. Tomorrow they will need to simmer in water with alum and food coloring (they come out a beautiful red), then be drained again and go into their syrup. Then three days of once a day draining the syrup off, bringing it to a boil and pouring it back on...and on Saturday, I can put them in jars! Cinnamon Pickles are a lot of work, but oh, they are so tasty!
All day I have been trying to decide what kind of pickles to make with the rest of the cucumbers. I want to make some more with a recipe I used last year called Old Timey Pickles and I want to make more Bread & Butter Pickles. These recipes don't take nearly so long - it is a one day process, no overnight soaking. But they doesn't make very many, so would not use all of the cukes. Also, they are supposed to be sliced, and the big fat cukes need the seeds cut out - they are mature enough that they are not tender. I'm thinking about maybe cutting them into chunks instead of slices. Maybe I will chuck the cukes and make one batch of each. Hmmm. Can I manage this tomorrow? We shall see. I may be pickled out before I am done.