Pickles

The harvest season is upon us, and as you may know, this makes me very nervous. Being that our kitchen is already full of enormous jars of saurkraut, thanks to the abundance of cabbage all summer, I just knew that M's enthusiasm for the Fermenting Arts could render the rest of the kitchen unusable. Ok, I'm exaggerating a little bit. But M's mother did bring us four quarts of cucumbers from King's Farm the other day, most of which became pickles. The first step is to wash all the cucumbers and cut off any weird blemishes.Next, find some jars. Make your brine. You can add anything you want, but M put in bay leaves, fresh dill, peppercorns, and a few hot peppers, and tons of garlic. The salt water is 6% brine - about 2.5 oz of salt to a gallon of water. Cooking is like science, and it comes in handy to have lots of measuring devices and scales so your kitchen looks like a lab and you can make sure your brine is the right proportion.

After you mix up your brine and chop your pickles, just jam them into the jar and let sit. And if you have trouble getting all the pickles into the jar because your hands are too big...well, just ask your small-handed wife to take care of it. And that is how M and K make pickles.