Monday, August 10, 2009

Pickles!

I realized that my summer weekends are now a thing of the past. We have two weddings next weekend, and after that we're headed to Montana for a major road trip vacation.

That said, we had a lot of stuff to put up from the garden. The green beans are overwhelming, the cucumbers keep coming, the zucchini is... not quite overwhelming, but I could survive on zucchini alone. I love the stuff. We never have too much.

A weekend full of canning was in order. Here's what we put by (sorry for the lack of pictures, I'll update later).

  • Seven pounds of scarlet runner beans (canned)
  • Seven half-pints of blueberry jam
  • Five half-pints of raspberry jelly
  • Two quarts of asian-style refrigerator pickles
  • One quart of half-sours, a fermented dill pickle
This quart-at-a-time pickling is quite convenient. I have never tried to do fermented dill pickles before (our sweet pickles are brined/fermented for 14 days before they are canned). I am excited to see the results. The recipe, from The Joy of Pickling, says that half-sours are "cucumbers still, not pickles - little cucumbers who have died and gone to heaven." I'll let you know our assessment in a week or so.