Pickling, two ways!

It's been a pickling kind of weekend.  A serious amount of things harvested yesterday were cucumbers and tomatoes.  So today, with the help of my son and his girlfriend, we set out to do some pickling.


First up:  we pickled Spicy Grape Tomatoes, using this recipe as a jumping off place.  I used small jars. They are beautiful and I'm looking forward to testing them in about 10 days.


The other kind of pickling we did today is two more batches of fermented pickles.  The first crock is still working, so I purchased two glass jars for these batches.  One will be very spicy.  One will be mildly spicy.  I hope.  As I mentioned before, fermenting is a trial and error.  Also, you just never know how hot any pepper really is, unless you eat it, which makes it tough to get it into your brine!  The glass jars will mean I can watch the fermentation!  I'm excited, can you tell?  These cucumbers we quartered, so they will process quicker than the whole pickles in the crock.  I'll keep you updated, if you're interested.

Turns out I just couldn't pickle the amazing garlic we grew.  It is seriously delicious and I want to use the heads we have for meals and such.  In fact, I made my Mom's Famous 8 Makes it Great Salsa today and used some of these cloves.  Woot!

I really do love pickles.  I peruse the pickle section of my favorite grocery nearly every time I'm in there, looking for something new. Being able to make my own is pretty amazing!

Next up on the schedule are Zucchini Pickles. Gotta do something with the pounds and pounds of squash!

Big thanks to my most excellent helpers today.  They cut, hefted, measured, harvested and consoled - all in perfect measure.  ♥