Picklin'

I was excited to get back to the farm this year as I wanted to learn how to make pickles. I remember making them with my mom years ago when I lived on the farm but I couldn’t remember how to do them. So we decided to get a bushel of cucumbers and then we would make them at mom’s house. So day one you wash, measure and cut up your cucumbers into their buckets and cover them with boiling water ( I think you put pickling salt in them this night too). Then you let them sit for 4 days. On the 5^th day you drain off the water (which is really quite gross and odoriferous) and add a gallon of boiling water with a tablespoon of alum dissolved in it. The alum makes them crunchy!

Then the next night you drain off the water and mix up the syrup which is vinegar and sugar and green food colouring. You pour that over the pickles. You put the pickling spice in cheese cloth and let it sit in the liquid. You do this each night reserving the liquid and then on the 11^th day, you boil the syrup one last time and put them in jars and pour the liquid over top! Voila pickles!!!!

I brought a couple of small jars into a couple of my friends at work and they said they were good – so that’s good to hear! We were joking around saying next year I should make a bucket of red, a bucket of green, a bucket of purple and a bucket of yellow pickles and then put them in a jar together to make rainbow pickles!!!! We’ll see!

Chow for now,

Jacqui