Jananas

Yesterday I was walking home from the park and noticed that one of the little local grocers had mini ‘cukes available for sale. I’ve talked before about my desire to make homemade dill pickles and Jason’s sister was talking this past week about their previous adventures in canning dill pickles. I figured that today was as good a day as any to try! Over the course of the day yesterday I grabbed 12 1L mason jars ($12.80), 17lbs of ‘cukes ($17), some more white vinegar ($2), and some dill/dill seed ($5).

This afternoon, after getting home from having an always good lunch with my friend Brenda, I decided that it was now or never! I had found this recipe online for dill pickles and it seemed as good as any. I immediately set out to sterilize the mason jars (I ran mine through my dishwasher on the sani-wash setting along with a little bleach) and cool my cucumbers. Here they are just sitting in the sink being cool as can be. This took about two and a half hours.

Once the jars were clean I put in the various spices. I had picked up fresh dill (which smells amazing!). The recipe calls for dill head, although comments on the recipe say that dill seed can work as a replacement so I used that instead. I also added a little bit of Keen’s dry mustard and some whole peppercorns for a bit of zest. Jason & I both love (love!) garlic, so I used 4 whole heads in these babies. After the spices where in, I added some cukes. These were fat suckers, so I slices a bunch of them to fit some more into the jars.

As I was getting the jars ready, I had set the big pot of brine to boil on the stove. It took a while longer to heat up, but Jason kept me company. We filled the jars as a team, with Jason pouring brine and myself wiping edges and putting lids on. It seemed to work well, once I realized that if he had two jars handy he could fill the second while I was dealing with the first. After they were all done Jason tightened the lids as I wasn’t sure that I’d done a good enough job.

Then we placed the jars in a sink full of hot water. Awesome is that we’ve heard a bunch of loud ‘popping’ sounds coming from the kitchen, which is the seals forming. Its been about half so far which has me excited. Hopefully the rest will go soon!!

Sadly, we ran out of the boiling brine mixture partway through the last jar. We topped it up with water, vinegar, and a pinch of salt. Its sitting in the fridge right now. We know it isn’t sealed and so won’t keep forever, but as long as we eat it in the next two weeks (I’m sure that won’t be a hardship…) it’s all good.

Overall, this was a pretty easy experience. I’m thinking that since I still have cucumbers, dill, and garlic that I’ll pick up some more jars later this week and make a second batch! Maybe with some hot peppers…

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