In a Pickle

This week was my first real week of summer. The first week out of school was spent packing and last minute shopping for the move. The next week was spent in San Antonio finishing the house. I came back and 36 hrs. later left for NYC. Lots of fun and what I look forward to the entire last semester of school, but still not "summer". This week was the first chance I had to catch up on some photo editing. I finished up a wedding, worked on baby shower invitations that have to be just right, did some shopping and just enjoyed doing what I wanted. In the past couple of days, I had a serendipitous food happening. I was given a ton of fresh tomatoes, and then green beans and okra. Not a ton, just a handful. I had planned on cooking them the ol' fashioned way, but then... Mycah gave me some canning jars. I took this as a sign to make pickles.

I looove pickles and will eat any kind. Every time I taste a new pickle and like it, I try to recreate it. You know that pepper relish you get at Blue Mesa? I can copy it. Chow-chow at Cracker Barrel? Made it. Pickled weenies? Yep. Not tootin' my own horn because pickles aren't that hard, it's just hard to get enough of the ingredients to make them. Who wants to buy a bushel of okra? And then all that water bathing so you don't get botulism plus you have to store all those jars of provisions for the winter! That's why I haven't made pickles or canned salsa in a while. With only 2 of us here, we didn't need that much food. When the kids were here this past year, I didn't have the time or space.

Today I got up and I had a craving for pickled okra. I decided to only make 1 jar. Then I remembered the green beans and the great ones I had in Canton. I pulled out a couple of old cookbooks to compare recipes, took what I liked out of each and got to pickling. I had dill in my herb bed, although the swallowtail caterpillars had eaten most of it, and some garlic. There were some peppers in the bag I was given, so I added those, too. I mixed up the vinegar, water and salt and let it come to a boil while I washed everything. I didn't have enough to quite fill the jars, so I added onions to the green beans and carrots to the okra. Because I didn't make so much that it had to keep for months, I left off the water bath.

In 10 days (or a month, depending on which recipe you follow), I will have some deeelicious pickles. I doubt I will wait that long.