A Cool Pickle Day

 This week of July is typically the hottest week of the year for us.  And that's exactly when Pickle Day usually happens.  But today is rainy and cool with a breeze and right now, at 3:30 pm, it is only 62F (16C).  

We use the turkey fryer to process pickles so we can keep a lot of the steam outside, and we had to move the turkey fryer to the corner of the deck because the breeze kept blowing out the flame.

The turkey fryer basket holds seven pint jars which is perfect for the amount of pickles we eat each year.

I cut enough cucumbers to have two or three pints of refrigerator pickles and had brine left over which will keep for another week.  When I get more cucumbers, I will make a batch of dill pickles, and I will have the option of processing more bread and butter.

The refrigerator batches are my favorite.  They are so crisp because they have not been cooked and we have been out of sweet pickles for over a month now so these will go fast!

Strawberry Jam

 This is why we work so hard. The most perfect bowl of strawberries I have ever picked.  No slug damage.  None rotting in the soil.  None stolen by chipmunks or pecked at by birds.  And its not easy.  There is trimming and weeding and fertilizing and watering and outsmarting pests.

There is nothing better than fresh Strawberry freezer Jam.  This is my second batch this week.  I would like to make three and it looks like that won't be any trouble at all.  Last year the plants were too young and I only got one batch, had none to share and I ran out back in February.  I've been eating honey on my toast since then.

This makes the hard work worth while.

Sweet Pickle Relish

 My Bell Peppers finally started to color up so yesterday I canned Sweet Pickle Relish.  I followed This Recipe and added one large bell pepper for a little color variation.  I would have preferred to use a red one, but I only had yellow so I threw in one orange Havasu hot pepper because it was ready to use.   My total poundage for Cucumbers, Peppers and Onions (pre dicing) was 4 pounds and that yielded three pints plus a little leftover to use right away.  Three pints will easily get us through one year.

This didn't really make a dent in the backlog of pickling cucumbers that I have harvested but I have found that I am enjoying eating the picklers just as much as the big, burpless slicers.  They are very crisp, especially if you take the time to cut out the seeds.

Now I have only to wait for my Havasu Peppers to ripen so I can make pickled peppers and then my preserving will be done for the summer.  I have frozen two gallons of Beans and we are working through the second bed of Sweet Corn, freezing a little at a time.  The Gotta Have It Sweet Corn has been just as excellent as the Solstice was.

Pickle Season Has Begun

 My pickling cucumber vines have been producing very well.  It took three days of picking to gather a hydrator full of cucumbers.  There are four pounds here.  I also picked my first slicing cucumber today and there are three or four that will be ready in a day or two.   I like to pick pickling cukes quite small to get more small slices to cram into the jars.  A couple of them got away from me and got too big, but still not over ripe.

I wanted to put some onions in the jars this time.  I've never done that, but as a child one of my Mom's good friends made pickles with her grandmother every year from her own garden and my favorite part of the pickles were the little rings of pickled onions in each jar.

I just use Mrs. Wages quick process packets, but this year, since I have peppers and onions handy, I plan to experiment with pickle spices from scratch and make some sweet relish.  We do not use much relish, so two or three pints will keep us in relish all year.  But first I have to make the dill slices to store.

I made six pints to store, which is about how many we will use in a year.  There is also a seventh, lightly packed jar with some of the largest slices that I will open first to use,

Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly on Vanilla Marigolds

P.S. I just went out and picked my first handful of Seychelles pole beans for supper.  The Monte Gusto, despite being thriftier than the others, have just blossomed.  They should only be three days behind the others but they are lagging.

Rotten Dahlia

 

I went ahead and dug up that wilted Dahlia today.  Yup.  Complete mush.  

I planted a sprouted tuber in its place since I had them.  I did not plant it as deep.  The soil around it didn't seem any more saturated than I would expect so it could be that this tuber had a nick or bruise that I hadn't noticed that made it more susceptible to rot.

I got my strawberry freezer jam made.  Just enough berries today and plenty more to come.  It isn't raining today but it looks like something could develop at any minute.  Complete cloud cover.

That's the fun of living close to the Great Lakes.    Not only to we get unpredictable lake effect snow, but we get lake effect rain too.

...of Pickled Peppers

 Peter Piper Picked a Peck 

of Pickled Peppers.  

And when you have a peck o' peppers, its time to get pickling.

I am using my Havasu peppers for refrigerator pickles.  Now last year I ended up eating these fresh with hummus.  They have a nice thick wall and were not particularly hot.  Their cone shape makes them perfect to slice up for scooping dip.   This year they are hotter and I haven't enjoyed them fresh.  Last year I planted them intermixed with Sweet Banana Peppers.  There is a rumor out there that if you plant your sweet peppers and your hot peppers together, that the sweet will be hotter and the hots will be sweeter.  That would certainly be true if the plants cross pollinated and you planted the seeds. This year it is probably just the weather, but that is how rumors get started.  Maybe next year I will buy another pack of Banana Peppers and see...

Anyway, I have all of these (too) hot peppers and I had intended to try pickling them for my husband.  I chose a random recipe off the internet which used ingredients I already had on hand and hit paydirt on the first try.  These peppers are awesome pickled and they have been a big hit here for snacking with friends and neighbors for the past few weeks.  From the beginning I put a little twist on it of my own.

My ingredient list for one pint is:

1/2 cups white vinegar

1/2 cups apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon mustard seed

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon of pink peppercorns

Mix the ingredients and bring to a boil.  Pour the liquid into a jar of peppers sliced in spears or rings.

I forgot the sugar in the first photo.  Sugar is very important.  The brine is wonderfully sweet, then you get the fresh crunch of pepper and finally it socks it to you with the hhhhhot.  The amount of hot depends on how much of the seeds and pith you remove when you are slicing your peppers.

The addition of Brazilian Pink Peppercorns was an inspired choice based on a pickle kit I've used in the past for dilly beans.  I can't get that mix anymore and was thinking I would just recreate it.  So I bought pink peppercorns.  I haven't gotten around to trying the horseradish beans and I have all these peppercorns...

I make these as refrigerator pickles because I like the fresh crunch.  There is no reason why you couldn't water bath can these to make them shelf stable.  I feel that the real merit of refrigerator pickles whether they are peppers or dill spears or dilly beans is that they are garden fresh and oh so crunchy.  My husband has declared these the tastiest peppers ever and they are so easy.

Freezing Beans

 This year has been a great year for beans.  Last year I decided I would never fiddle with bush beans again.  It's pole beans for me.  They keep on producing as the vines keep growing and you don't have to get down on the ground to pick 'em.

I have settled on two really good varieties. Monte Gusto and Seychelles.

I freeze my beans because I think canning is a lot of sweaty work.  I don't mind making pickles, but water bath canning or pressure cooker canning isn't any fun.  Freezing is simple and you can do it in small batches.  Have a handful of beans? (or peas or a few extra ears of corn?)  Pop them in the freezer.

Here are my steps for freezing beans.

Take the ends off the beans and chop them into bite size pieces.  Boil some water, take it off the heat, and throw the beans in for three minutes.

Strain the beans and have an ice bath ready.

Put the beans in the ice bath and leave them until the cubes melt.

Strain the beans again and spread the cooled beans on a tray and put them in the freezer for a day.  This means you have to keep your freezer organized well enough to be able to fit a tray in there.  When the beans are frozen solid, break them off of the tray and put them in bulk into a gallon bag.  It sometimes takes me three or four small batches to fill a gallon bag.  That's the beauty of freezing as opposed to canning.   It is simple and easy and can be done in small batches.  When you want to eat beans, get some water boiling, take a handful or two out of the bulk bag and boil for three minutes.

When I prepare fresh beans, I use a steamer and steam for ten minutes, but boiling frozen beans is almost as good.  Two gallons will get us through the winter just fine and by the time bean season rolls around again we will be out of frozen beans and wishing for the garden fresh version.

Preparing Horse Radish

 When I was digging potatoes I kept running into really nice horseradish root.  It is a little early in the season to harvest horseradish because cold weather brings out the flavor.  But its still good even if it isn't really hot.  So I don't waste it. I have three big clumps of horseradish along this bank.  Two of them stay nice and tidy and never try to wander off.  But this newest clump is next to a planting area which I am always digging up.  Not only is the soil soft and inviting, but it seems like each time you break a root it uses the opportunity to send up a plant at the breaking point.  

This nice little plant is not welcome here.

Whenever I come across a nice root, I dig as much of it out as I can.  Then I just pop it in a zipper bag and put it in the garden fridge.  My husband is on his way down the fall chores list and today he cleaned out the garden shed fridge.  Our house fridge was completely over run with beer and sweet tea and cabbages so it was a good time to deal with these roots.  This beats the heck out of digging them mid-winter when the ground is muddy and you're out in the snow with a pot of water trying to thaw the ground - but I do it that way too.  How else would we get fresh horseradish for home made cocktail sauce for our holiday shrimp?

The first step is to get a good veggie brush and scrub the roots clean.

These long, flexible carrot-like roots are my favorite to deal with not the coarse, gnarly type at the base of the plant.

Next, cut off the dirty, broken end and the little end that is too skinny to peel.

The roots are just like carrots.  There is no real skin to them, but you want to clean them up and inspect them.  The goal here is not to whittle them down to nothing.  Just scrape the discoloration off.

You could grate this by hand and if you want to  - more power to you.  But I use the food processor.  Here is also where they stop acting like carrots.  They are quire fibrous and tough to chop. You'll need a good chef's knife to dice the roots into something your food processor can handle.

Nothing special here, just a little 3 cup chopper.  I start with just a handful of root.

As the first ones get to a good consistency I keep adding more.  I put about half a cup of water in too to get the mixture moving.  You want to keep shredding until you get quite a fine mixture.

The consistency will begin to get pasty.  You can use vinegar instead of water if you want.  The vinegar will stop and stabilize the chemical process so the longer you wait to add the vinegar, the hotter your end result will be.  If you want more mild taste, go ahead and use vinegar.  This time of year before the roots go dormant the flavor is more mild anyway.

Use a spoon the remove the horseradish leaving the liquid behind.

I use a spoon to pack the mixture down bringing more water to the top so I can pour the liquid off.

Top off the jar with white vinegar.  I use the spoon to loosen the jar contents and allow the vinegar to percolate down to the bottom.  Some people add salt but its not necessary. 

Now you have a jar of nice fresh horse radish that will keep in the refrigerator.  I always date mine.  It will keep for three or four months but will start to lose its kick after about three or four weeks. We use it mostly for roast beef sandwiches.  When fresh it makes absolutely awesome cocktail sauce.  Just find your standard cocktail sauce recipe using ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice.

Pickle Day 2021 - And Why the Turkey Fryer is a Superior Water Bath Canner

 It's Pickle Day.

Again.

This year I thought this day would never come because I had such a hard time growing cucumbers.  But they finally did grow.  And I finally had enough for a good batch of pickles.  The cucumbers will keep fine in the hydrator until you have enough built up.  I don't plan pickle day until I have almost a hydrator full.  Five or six pounds.

I like to blog pickle day because I do go back and study to get myself in the right frame of mind and form my plan.  Canning is not something you want to improvise.  And you don't want to get done and think "oh no did I....."

Previous Pickle Blogs:

• Pickle Day 2020
• It's 93 degrees out. This must be Pickle Day
• Dill Pickle Day 2018
• Yes You Can ~ Bread and Butter Pickles

I sometimes skip a pickle year.  We are beginning to become predictable as to how many pickles we use.  About 6 pints of dill and 3 or 4 pints of sweet per year.  You don't want to make much more than that.  I will sometimes make a quart of refrigerator pickle spears using another spice but that is for late season cucumbers, not the main plan.

With canning you have to make good use of space and materials.  The cucumbers can be sliced ahead of time.  I scrubbed the cucumbers last night and put them in a big bag.  When I am ready to slice I mix up a pan of ice water and pickling lime.  The slices can wait a few hours while you get everything else set.

Stove top space is where you run into trouble.  It is actually not easy to do water bath canning on a glass electric stove top.  It is not easy to get that much water to a rolling boil in a short time period.  This is why we like to use the turkey fryer out in the drive way.  I was going to make the pickles yesterday on the stove top because it was raining and I needed an indoor project but my husband wanted to wait until this morning and use the fryer.  You may wonder why that's important since you already have three pots of hot going on the stove.

Well the reason is - you already have three pots of hot going on the stove!

We're already running the air conditioner.  We don't need one more pot of boiling water.  The other thing is... well there are two things... The basket that comes with the fryer is much easier to deal with than your typical water bath canner insert.  The canner inserts don't work well for pints and even a quart jar will tip especially if you don't have a full load.  Secondly, you get almost unlimited depth of water.  There is no problem covering the jars with several inches of water.  You can use the fire ring for your standard canner, but the fryer pot is better in most cases.  Plus it has a spigot to drain the water.

I start hours before jotting my notes and assembling my tools.  Of course you need a jar funnel and a lifter and a ladle.  I also need a couple of baking dishes and dish gloves.  Another essential is a Ball Blue Book to flip through to refresh yourself on processing times and head room etc.

This time I wanted to make some spears so I chose a few cucumbers for that and after trimming the stem off, checked the size to make sure they won't be too long.

I use the Ball flex batch spices.    Sterilize the jars and rings, heat the lids, and get the pickle solution hot.  Then it comes to jar stuffing.  Stuffing pickles is a learned skill.  More will fit in!  Once the pickles are cooked they can rearrange themselves and show you that there really was more space.  This is where variation in slice size comes in handy.  You don't want your jars to cool too much while you are stuffing.  That's the easiest way to lose a jar.  If you let the jar cool then plunge it into a rolling boil you can crack a jar, especially if it already has an imperfection you missed  To avoid this, I use the baking dish, pull a jar out of the hot water, pour the hot water into the dish and set the jar in that.  Pull a second jar out, but leave the water back in the sterilization pot.  Bring two jars to the sink to stuff.

You can handle a hot jar with a dish glove.

Get the slices stuffed in and then take the baking pan back to the stove.  Pour in the brine using the baking dish to catch any spills.  Put on your lid and rings and then you can set your filled jar back in the hot sterilization water to wait.

The fryer basket will hold 7 pints.  I don't remember if it holds 6 or 7 quarts.

I only use quart jars for tomatoes.

So while I have been stuffing jars, the turkey fryer water has been brought up to a good rolling boil and I process pickles for 20 minutes because we are more than 1500 feet above sea level.

This basket really is so much better than those rickety wire canner baskets

When the jars are out of the water bath, I put them into a baking pan lined with a towel and bring them indoors to cool slowly.

When I was weighing out cucumbers, I used the instructions on the spice jar to figure I needed about six pounds.  Apparently I sliced them too carefully, because I ended up with way too many leftover slices.  While the first seven pints were in the water bath I turned the heat back up on the jar water and mixed up a second spice solution.  I only had four more pint jars available so I did a short batch of four pints.  I still had a few slices and spears left and of course brine.  So I grabbed a quart jar and a few more cucumbers from the garden.  I sliced the new ones into spears and shoved the whole batch of new and old slices into the quart jar, filled it with leftover brine and stuck it in the fridge.  It will be ready to eat in two weeks.

And that concludes Pickle Day 2021.  I, ooops, made 10 jars of slices not 6.

Plus my justforfun spears which I should have made more of,

We still have 6 jars left from last year.

We need to up our pickle consumption just a bit.

Next year we will need to make bread and butter pickles