The best thing about being a dedicated Blogger is that you can go back and look at past pickle days to formulate a plan in your head and get all of the right supplies ready. When I got up today my enthusiasm, on a scale of 1 to 10, was about a "2". By the time breakfast was through I had worked myself up to a "3". Well, I thought, at least things are improving.
I went back to a few blogs to wrap my head around the logistics of all the pots and pans and boiling water, and assembled my supplies. My level of enthusiasm had skyrocketed to about "7". It helps that my husband was looking forward to it and ready to help. He is always intrigued by the process, and his job is to man the turkey fryer in the driveway where we do the hot water bath processing.
Using a turkey fryer outside is convenient because a lot of the heat and steam is outside, and the turkey fryer itself is much deeper so you can easily fill the water over the top of the jars. Many gallons of water in a canner are not easy to get to a rolling boil on a standard stovetop. On a propane turkey fryer it is a piece of cake. It also has a very sturdy basket which works a lot better than your typical canner basket.
Cucumbers were sliced, water was boiled and jars were stuffed. This was probably the nicest day I've ever spent making pickles. For starters, it was about 80 degrees out and clear. I don't know why but Pickle Day always seems to fall in the middle of a massive heat wave, so this was an exception. I made 14 pints of dill using Mrs Wages Kosher Dill mix. I had more cucumbers than that, so I scraped up the few remaining pint jars I had and mixed up some Bread and Butter pickles using Ball's Flex Batch mix. I didn't really need to make Bread and Butter because we still have enough, but it made a lot more sense than more Dill. All but one jar sealed, and that is in the fridge.
When it was all over I thought "wow, that was easy!"
Here are links to my previous pickle fun:
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