Pickles

It was a fairly quiet weekend in Farmville. The heat is making things grow like crazy, but it also means I have to stay on top of the watering. Some of the cucumbers were ready yesterday, so I picked them and did not have anything specific in mind to do with them. I made a salad from one last night, along with tomato, onion and mint. It was very refreshing in this heat. After cleaning up the kitchen this morning, I took a count and decided there were more cucumbers than what would be used in salads the next couple of days. Part of the Farmville crew is out of town at the moment and other crew members eat more fast food than they should, so the big decision was made to throw together a batch of refrigerator pickles to use them up. Another factor in this decision is that RJ has big plans to make pickles from his own garden this summer. I figured this could be a test run to fine tune things so when he is ready to make pickles, I can give him some "true life" perspective.

The concept for refrigerator pickles is pretty simple. You soak them in an acidic brine that preserves them. Since they are not canned in the proper sense, they have to be kept in the refrigerator and will only keep a few months. My research shows you can use this method with many other garden vegetables as well. If we get real ambitous around here, we might try this with squash, peppers, onions, and green tomatoes too. Every dinner table should have a nice assortment of pickles to go with the meal. These pickles will have all Farmville produced stuff in them. The only store bought ingredients are the vinegar and salt.

The picture of the ingredients on the white tray shows how simple the recipe is. There are cucumbers, garlic, onion, and dill. I cut the cucumbers into spears since that's how I prefer to eat pickles. The garlic was coarsely chopped and the onion was quartered. Dill, garlic, and onion are put into the bottom of the jars and then the cucumbers spears go in. Then you put the same amount of garlic, onion, and dill on top of the cucumbers, fill each jar with a solution of water, vinegar and kosher salt; cover and put in the refrigerator for a few days; then start eating them. Pretty easy, if you ask me. As the Farmville harvest picks up momentum, the plan is to post about the way the produce is utilized. Hopefully this gets people thinking about how best to make use of all the stuff we will no doubt be awash in very shortly. If there are suggestions, please let me know. One of the fun things about this is the possibility to expand my horizons and learn new ways to make great things from this project.