Foodie Friday: Pickle It

 It is pickle season. I started doing this about 5 or 6 years ago. I buy a dozen or so pickling cucumbers at the farmers market, I prefer smaller ones. Give them a rinse, trim the ends, and put them in a brine of 4 cups of water, 1/2 cup white distilled vinegar, 2 tablespoons salt, fresh dill, a couple of crushed garlic cloves, and some kind of peppers, fresh or dried. Weigh them down so the cucumbers stay submerged in the brine, and let them sit at room temperature for 4 to 7 days. You can see and smell as they pickle. You can vary the spicing. These are then refrigerated and eaten fresh. They are not preserved for long term storage. I go through about a dozen of these a week, for three or four months in the summer when fresh fruit is available. 

Try it, is as easy as it sounds. There are a ton of how to pickle books out there. You can probably find one in the library or your neighborhood used book store.   At least to start with, stick with the fresh pickles and not ones that are processed in a boiling water bath or pressure cooker. These are easy, and if made on small quantities you will consume them long before they spoil (most of the time, about once a year I have a batch go moldy and toss them out.)