...keeping my life stitched together
From the category archives:
We won a ham at the church festival.
A giant ham!
(Madalyn‘s mother-in-law would be so jealous!) ;)
We weren’t able to take it to the butcher to have it cut up, so tonight I had to go at it myself. While we didn’t get pretty ham steaks and roasts out of it, it’ll do. There are some big chunks and some small. Enough for many meals.
And the bone is left.
Kevin has plans to turn this into a pot of bean soup in the Fall.
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Regular dill pickles take about 10 minutes to make. Up to a half-hour if you’re going to can them.
Sweet pickles take a minimum of 7 days.
Day 1: Trim the ends off your cucumbers.
Then pour boiling water over them and let them sit overnight. I think people used to do this in a crock of some sort, but I just used one of my stainless steel pots.
Day 2: They now look like this:
Not as pretty as they used to be! Pour boiling water over them and let them sit again.
Days 3 and 4: repeat day 2.
Day 5: Big excitement! We get to mix up the brine.
It takes nearly a full bag of sugar! And some vinegar. A little salt, and the pickling spices. It smells like Autumn!
Also, it’s time to cut up the cucumbers into whatever size pieces you want. I decided to cut mine into chunks.
Pour the brine over the cucumbers, and let them sit for 2 days. I gave them a stir each morning and night.
Day 7 (or day 8 in my case since we weren’t home on day 7): It’s finally time to can them! Bring everything to a boil, and then pack in hot jars. Can in a boiling-water bath.
I got 6 pints out of my batch. No one else in the family likes them (they all tried one and made faces and icky sounds). My father-in-law has been begging for sweet pickles, so he has a few jars heading his way.
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For future reference, it takes exactly 5 of my little cucumbers, and a half-recipe of the brine to make 2 quarts of pickles.
These went straight to the refrigerator. We love refrigerator pickles. So easy to make (not that canning is difficult, it’s just more steps and more dishes!), and the cukes stay crispy.
The only problem is waiting for them to be ready to eat! It takes a minimum of a week (2 for them to really absorb the flavor).
I checked the cucumber plants last night, and there are a lot of babies plumping up! Next pickling day, I’ll make a batch that isn’t spicy for the kids. I also want to try making some sweet pickles.
Added to this week’s grocery list: Vinegar, garlic, and dill. My little dill plants are growing, but not fast enough to be used for the pickles yet!
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Plus one more that was picked yesterday.
I’m not sure how many jars I’ll get out of these 5, maybe 2 quart jars (not packed tightly). We’ll make refrigerator pickles, using this recipe I used last year.
I’ll make some spicy for the adults, and not as spicy for the kids. Some zucchini will likely be added to the mix as well!
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Unfortunately, this isn’t from berries from my garden (we don’t grow enough for that!).
A couple of months ago, strawberries were on sale at the grocery store (and they were good berries too!). I bought 5 or 6 containers. I washed, hulled, and cut them up, and then flash froze them. Then I put them into a vacuum-sealed bag and back into the freezer.
On Memorial Day, I finally had time to turn them into jam!
The recipe says it’ll make 8 half-pints, but I got more than that. 8 half-pints (one I didn’t process, it went straight to the fridge since we were out of jam) and 3 quarter-pints. I just love those tiny little jars!
Last year I had 5 half-pints, and that lasted us almost the whole year. So this will definitely have us covered for the next year.
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