A Passion for Pickles!

I can not believe that I am blogging about PICKLES! I am not even especially crazy about pickles. But these are so very blog-worthy!  I can't personally take credit for this pickle recipe. I give all of the credit to the instructions that I found on a blog called It's Just Laine .  

I popped into to my favorite little country fruit stand, Kruse Farms Market, to buy pickling cucumbers. I went a little bit crazy and bought a 25 lb. bag of medium cukes. What was I thinking?  I was certainly not thinking about how many jars of pickles a 25 lb. bag of cucumbers yields.  We just might possibly have pickles for life.

It's a monster bag! Notice that it's on the floor because it was too big to heft onto the counter top.

I got a bit sidetracked and had to take a photo of the beautiful varieties of cauliflower 

available at Kruse's. Their colors were stunning!  The girls who work at Kruse's must think that I am some kind of a nutcase, continually coming in and photographing fruits and vegetables. How weird is that?

I knew that I wanted to make a nice Kosher-style dill pickle. I Googled pickle recipes and was a bit overwhelmed at all of the options out there. But Laine's recipe appealed to me most.

             

In the interest of pickle hygeine, I just want to mention here that these cucumbers come out of the field in a decidedly grubby state.  After all, they grow on or near the dirt. My directions said to trim off the blossom end of the cucumber, since there is some sort of funky enzyme located there that will make your pickles mushy. So just to be perfectly sure that I had removed the blossom ends, I trimmed BOTH ends. Problem solved. You just never want to take a chance on mushy pickles! I also lightly scrubbed them with a soft brush, just to be safe. So the dirty cucumbers are pictured above.... 

...And the clean and perfectly pretty premature pickles are pictured here.

Laine has posted lots of photos on her blog showing how to make her pickles.  I spiced my pickles up just a bit, because we're older, with semi-dead taste buds...  I added 1 teaspoon of pickling spice and a single dried red pepper to each pint jar.  

Mr. T. and I taste tested my pickles this afternoon.  I should clue you in here and tell you that Mr. T. tries to get excited about my endless projects and endeavors, but he is not always entirely on board.  

I can tell...

But I scored big here with these pickles. Mr. T. is something of a pickle connoisseur and he pronounced these to be positively DELICIOUS!  They are crispy, crunchy, tangy and have a just a bit of ZING from the red pepper.  Think CLAUSSEN'S, but way better!  And a nice, crisp pickle makes a really good little snack. I know.  I've been snackin'. 

So KRUSE on over to Laine's blog and get the recipe to make your very own killer pickles. Making them is easier than you would think and they are truly worth the effort.  Thank you, Laine, for your recipe.

Update:  Elder daughter, called "The Brainiac" took a jar of my pickles along with her when she went camping last month on the northern California coast with her long-time friend, Mimi F.  Mimi apparently fell in love with my pickles and is savoring evert last bit.  Here is the photo that she sent to Brainiac of her fridge. I see beer, yogurt and half of a pickle. The Staff of Life!