A lot of amazing produce came out of garden last year, but by far the cucumbers were the best producers. We had never had a year that we got so many.

At one point, I counted two harvests, and we had 282 cucumbers to deal with. That was after eating some fresh and giving some away. The shelf life of a raw cucumber isn’t that impressive, so we had our hands full. Besides eating them fresh and making a good amount of “Cucumber Water” @papa-pepper got creative.

I tried making sandwiches and substituting halved cucumbers for bread. I made Peanut Butter and Jelly Cucumbers and Ants on a Cucumber. The best experiment was hollowing one out and stuffing it with diced Chicken Caesar Salad, which tasted amazing. However, no matter how hard we tried or how creative we got, there was no way that we could use them all right away.

Once again, the blessing of canning came in handy, and we can now enjoy the produce from our garden last summer all winter long. Plus, we love pickles!

There are of course so many ways to slice cucumbers for pickling, if you slice them at all, and many different variations on pickling methods. Personally, I like a simple recipe for my main batches, and then experiment a bit too, sometimes even adding super-hot peppers to spice things up.

My basic Pickle Recipe is as follows:

• Cucumbers
• Canning & Pickling Salt
• Vinegar
• Water
• Dill
• Garlic

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Basically, I rinse the Dill, Garlic, & Cucumbers and heat up a 50/50 blend of water and vinegar. I’ll use about a teaspoon of pickling salt per jar, so I calculate how many jars I’m making and add the appropriate amount of salt into the Vinegar and Water mixture. The easiest way to determine how many jars you are making is to fill clean, freshly washed, canning jars with the pickles. I usually start will the Dill and Garlic, and then stuff the Cucumbers on top to keep the dill from floating.

Once the mixture had been brought to a boil, I carefully pour the liquid into the jars, leaving about a half inch of “head space.” Then I like to use a hot water bath, which is basically a large pot of boiling water. Simply submerge your filled and topped jars in the hot water bath and wait about 10 minutes. For the hot water bath, it’s good to just get the lids “finger tight” so that air can still escape.

If the jars are left in the hot water bath too long, the pickles will be soggy, so be careful to watch that. After the desired hot water bath time limit has been reached, I remove the jars and place them on a towel at room temperature to cool. Soon, I am able to hear the lids begin to pop, as they seal themselves.

By using this simple recipe and method, we now have lots of homemade pickles to enjoy year round, all provided by our own garden!

I think it’s important to teach these simple skills to my little ones, the @little-peppers. If they choose the same lifestyle that I have, they will have grown up with all these skills, and not need to be learning them in their thirties. If they don’t, it’s still a rewarding experience and knowledge that can be there later if it is ever needed.

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For now, they just like eating the pickles.

Actually, @papa-pepper enjoyed a whole pint jar full along with his lunch today. As a bonus, our wild harvested Garlic from the nearby woods was very plentiful in my lunch jar, so that was excellent. We may have about 50 jars still left! Obviously, having the garden produce hundreds of cucumbers can be an amazing blessing!

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FULL STEEM AHEAD!!!

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