Thursday, July 4, 2013

Refrigerator Pickles

My cucumbers turned out not to be cucumbers.  I think they are musk melons, but not sure yet.  What I planted were Soyo Long seeds.  Apparently, there were musk melon seeds in the compost and they germinated instead of the cucumber seeds.  Oh well, I can try again in the fall. 

My mother, on the other hand, who usually struggles with plants, has a fantastic garden this year.  Her cucumbers are epic.  So I am getting nine to twelve inch long cucumbers from her.  The first one I took home was so big, it was super bitter.  The only thing to do with a bitter cucumber, is make pickles.  We make dill pickles as well as sweet and sour pickles.  That one giant cucumber made three large jars of pickles.  Two dill one sweet and sour.  The Baby Manimal ate almost all of those pickles and left the brine in the refrigerator.  I have another long, but not bitter cucumber from mom's garden.  I had been eating on it (to big to eat in one setting), but it was starting to get a little soft.  I simply sliced it up and put it in the brine and put that back in the refrigerator.  In a day or two there will be pickles.  They won't last as long as pickles that are processed in a water bath.  That wont matter here, because they will be eaten long before they can go bad.

 
Mom and her J is for Jumbo cucumber :)