pickles keep me from knitting

Brian has been growing pickling cucumbers this year, so every few days now a basket of them appears on the kitchen table. I could ignore them, I've tried that, but they just get all moldy and icky and I have to throw them in the compost pile and that goes against my grain. So I make pickles. I've made several batches of bread and butter pickles, and different recipes of dill pickles. (he also finally got some dill to grow in our yard too) Someone gave me a recipe for Hungarian sun pickles, but I just couldn't bring myself to try it. It calls for alum, and leaving the pickles out in the sun for three days. I've tried just the standard kosher dills, and also some that you don't process at the end but store in the fridge. I am hoping that these are more like the refrigerator pickles we sometimes buy.
It takes a couple of days to make a batch because the first step is always salting or brining the cucumbers overnight.

here are some cucumbers salting with onions to make the bread and butter pickles. The dill pickles get soaked in a salt water brine without onions.Here are the ingredients gathered for the dill pickles. Cucumbers, salt, dill, pepper and garlic.


both the bread and butter pickles and the dill pickles get packed with a hot vinegar brine. The bread and butter recipe has sugar, turmeric, pepper, and mustard seed.
Here are the bread and butter pickles getting heated in the brine.then they get packed in sterile jars, the dill pickles get packed cold and have hot brine poured over them, the bread and butter pickles get packed hot.

Then they get processed in the boiling water cannerand voila! jars of pickles!
Today I am making another batch of bread and butter pickles. I have given away a few baskets of cucumbers too, let me know if you want some. We are eating the traditional cucumber and tomato salad too, but I think Brian is just about ready to pull out the plants and move on. Tomatoes are not coming with the abandon we are used to, it has been a troublesome year for them. But that is another blogstory........ At least I have my weaving class today so I will get to fondle some fiber.