Grandma Would Be Proud

Farmer's Market haul.

If you read my last post you know I have been doing a lot of cooking from scratch using fresh ingredients.  While at the Farmer's Market I picked up some fruit and veggies.  But today I focused on the small cucumbers I got in this haul to make pickles. 

I started gathering my canning equipment and getting very excited.  Seriously to this city girl it was one of the highlights of my week.  I used to watch my grandma prep her vegetables for canning when I was little.  Unfortunately I never learned from her because we movd out of state when I was 13 so spending weekends on the farm just wasn't in the cards anymore.

Boiling pickling juice.

After gathering all my stuff I gave the cucumbers a vinegar and water bath then started to cut some of them into chips and spears.  After packing them into my ball jars I got started making the pickling juice.  My house started to smell like one big pickle and my son stopped playing XBox long enough to come into the kitchen to see what smelled so good.  There aren't too many things that can drag him away from shooting zombies, but I guess pickles will do it.  He's my pickle eater, and given the choice of a bowl of pickles or a bowl of ice cream, he's grabbing the pickles.  Now back to the pickling.

Once the pickling juice was ready, into the jars of cucumbers it went.  As I put the lids on I started to think about my grandma and wondered if she ever had the same thoughts I was having.  I've made pickles before and every time I have the same thoughts, that it would be so much easier to just go to the store and buy them.  I mean the time it takes to sterilize the lids, the jars, cut up the cucumbers make the pickling juice, the water bath, I could have been to the store and back several times.  Well more than likely she didn't have those thoughts, after all she grew up on a farm during the depression, and helped my grandpa run their farm in her adult life, so I doubt that they got pickles from the store.

Ready for the water bath.

I brush those thoughts away and continue on with my pickle making.  Into the pot go the first 7 jars for their water bath.  I was able to make 9 pint jars and 5 quart jars of pickles.  Like the title says grandma would be proud, I'm kinda sorta following in her footsteps.

At the end of the day even though the thoughts of just bypassing all this work, not that it was a whole lot of work, and just going to the store and buy pickles, I kept at it and got a great batch of pickles.  Like the title says, my grandma would be proud because I'm kinda sorta following in her footsteps.