I realize the need we all have for light reading and pleasant distractions at the current time, I’ve just had a hard time finding the space in which to be the person who writes it. Continue reading
Cucumbers are starting to come in and since I have a bit of reputation for pickling everything in sight, I’ve already started fielding requests for my favorite cucumber preserving recipes. I thought I’d go ahead and put all my favorites into one post, so from here on out, I can just send this link in response to “What are your favorite cucumber pickle recipes?”
I’ve long said that if you like making pickles, then you only really need one book on pickling – Linda Zeidrich’s “The Joy of Pickling”. In fact, I refer to it as ‘my pickle bible’. But I recently discovered another less known gem and I am revising that statement. If you like making pickles, “The Joy of Pickling” is essential, but if you love making pickles, then you also need “The Complete Book of Pickles & Relishes” by Leonard Louis Levinson.
In a recent conversation with my friend Aaron, the subject quickly moved to the subject of pickles – specifically these pickled turnips he and his wife Dahlia seemed to only find in Jerusalem and did I think I could recreate them. He briefly described them to me and after a quick google search, I realized not only would they be fairly easy to make, but I had a recipe on hand for them already. (Joy of Pickling of course.)
It was a glorious Memorial Day weekend here. The weather was just simply beautiful and honeysuckle scented. We had no where to be for three whole days – a first since a snowstorm I’m pretty sure. Pat went fishing with Cola, we had lots of girl time in the yard, gardening was done, back roads were driven in pursuit of local berries, which got jammed and frozen while the strawberries we picked from our yard garden got turned into strawberry ice cream that was shared at an impromptu dinner last night with Charles and Carol, our second dinner party with neighbors over the weekend. There was a yard sale score in the shape of a pretty new covered cake stand – the sort that you can flip upside down and turn into a punch or trifle bowl in a pinch, which I guess gets entered into both collections, bringing me to four punchbowls and eight cake stands. To celebrate, I baked a pound cake – this is my go-to recipe, one I tore out of Southern Living eons ago. Just dump everything in your stand mixer and let it go. I love those sorts of recipes. Baking the pound cake was also to use up some of the four dozen duck eggs that were dropped off this weekend, some of which might be involved in a pickling project. The pound cake was pretty divine served with the homemade, homegrown strawberry ice cream. Ambitious to-do lists were made and accomplished this weekend, although the house didn’t really get cleaned like it needs. Now that I’ve wrapped up my last PB&J Fund classes for the semester, I’ll have free afternoons again so maybe I can get that caught up. I did get laundry (mostly) caught up this weekend. One shouldn’t be too ambitious about these things I don’t think. All in all, it was a lazily productive weekend, the sort that had lots of impromptu pop-ins and visits, poison ivy, lazy yard drinks, beautiful evenings and the first lightening bug sightings of the season. Hello summer.
I ran into my friend Annie the other night who asked when was I going to start taking orders for pickles again. I told her I hadn’t thought much about it, but I suppose I should. And so, here as promised to Annie Friday night at Bang!, is the post in which I talk about the pickle subscription. Continue reading
I recently cracked open a jar of that pickled eggplant. As part of the ongoing series of canning classes I’ve been teaching, I’d been asked if I could please lead another pickling class because ‘pickling is fun’. Indeed it is. I knew I could still get eggplant, so I figured I should actually sample the pickles before making them again. Served on some nice baguette with feta cheese and a drizzle of olive oil, pickled eggplant is a lovely antipasti. Continue reading
My last post was on the gift of a citron melon. I had cut into it to determine exactly what it was, so the clock was ticking in terms of me figuring out exactly what I was going to do with it. Uncut, the melon would have lasted months properly stored – similar to winter squash – but because I had cut into it, I needed to use it up and quickly.
Outside of my family, my friend Mollie is the biggest guinea pig for my culinary experiments, especially of the canned and pickled variety. So when she declares that Green Tomato Pickles are hands down, my best pickle, she would know. It wasn’t until this past summer when she asked for the recipe and started asking questions about the one I handed her that I realized I had sort of made up my own recipe for them. I know, I’m slow on the draw about that, as this is not the first time I’ve realized I’ve made up a recipe unintentionally, after the fact. I promised Mollie I’d get the recipe to her, so here it is.
So I finally got around into digging into Preserving by the Pint. And by digging into, I mean, making a few things out of it. Continue reading
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 