Refrigerator Pickles

It is not unusual to find a variety of pickles in our refrigerator and pantry. This summer has been a season of making refrigerator pickles from the cucumbers in our garden. It seems once we pick a basketful, a few days later we have more. Really I can not complain. We are just happy that our garden is doing so well despite the dry weather, that we have had in the Midwest.

Past summers, I have used my great aunts recipe that she used on the farm. It is a very simple recipe that took a course of several weeks to "age" to perfection. It is a good recipe.

This season we created the following refrigerator pickle recipe. It takes a week to rest in the refrigerator but the reward is wonderful.

One important task that you need to remember to do is sterilize the jars you will be using. You can do this one of two ways, first by washing with hot water in the dishwasher, or second by boiling on the stove top in boiling water for 10-15 minutes. Have the jars dry and ready before starting to prepare the pickles.

Ingredients

2 lbs cucumbers (sliced)
2 cups white vinegar
4 cups water
1 T. coarse sea salt
5 garlic cloves (crushed)
2 tsp. yellow mustard seed
Roughly 5T fresh dill spears (this is optional if you do not like dill) My husband does not like dill so we have made the recipes with dill and the other half minus the dill.

Wash the cucumbers and peel the skin (if you do not like the skin). Slice the cucumbers in the "thickness" desired. Crush the garlic cloves and set aside.

Bring the vinegar, water and salt to a boil on the stove top. Add the crushed garlic and mustard seed to the vinegar/water/salt mixture and boil for 5 minutes. Then turn the heat off and set aside.

At the bottom of the sterilized jars, place sprigs of fresh dill inside the bottom of the jar(s) and begin arranging the cucumbers on top of the dill. It is important to add layers of cucumbers and dill, then pour in some of the vinegar mixture as you go. Once you have filled your containers be sure to let the cucumbers/dill/vinegar mixture cool down to room temperature.

Place the filled jars in the refrigerator for one week before eating. This recipe allows for the pickles to stay in the refrigerator for up to one month, but I guarantee you will have them eaten before then.

* the photograph above is refrigerator pickles minus the dill.

A Garden of Delight

For a second year in a row, we have been growing our herbs in containers on our deck and have left the garden for the tomatoes, green peppers and zucchini. The herbs have been growing in big wine barrels where we have parsley, basil, cilantro, chives, rosemary and thyme flourishing. And then all along the side of our home a huge patch of peppermint that has been part of a summer project of making handmade soap. As well as a few leaves here and there in our ice tea. The extreme weather conditions here in Indiana have been all over the board and it strongly reinforcees how important it is to water every day, especially in the morning, for the garden to prosper.

My daughters have been my #1 helpers this summer in taking care of the garden by weeding, watering and the best part of all picking the vegetables, or helping to cut herbs for our meals. There have been a few times where they accidently bumped a green tomato and it fell to the ground...no worries because I shared with them that we can have the tomato ripe in our sunroom window and enjoy the science of the tomato changing from green to red, and tracking to see how long it takes. My science gurus have not bulked at this idea because they are all over science experiments.

There is one herb in particular that we have been enjoying and that has been rosemary. We have baked several times an Infused Rosemary in Honey Pound Cake as a special treat.