Safety and pickles

Today we are going to discuss something newly near and dear to my heart: kitchen safety. As I'm sure you're aware your kitchen is a very dangerous place. It's chock full of things like knives and stoves and other things that can either cut or burn you, or give you a rather squashed big toe. You should avoid getting cut, or burned, or squashed. It's generally unpleasant. Generally just be aware of your surroundings, avoid grabbing sharp things by the sharp end, or  hot things by the hot end, and you should be ok.

This PSA brought to you by: Mia is a dip who missed the jar and poured a ladle full of boiling brine all over her left hand and wrist. Remember my dears: Mia, screwing up so you don't have to!

Moving right along, I made three different types of pickles today.  And I still have 30 some odd cukes to deal with later this week. The aforementioned burn caused an early end to apicklypse  today. I made four jars of Alton Brown Bread and Butter Pickles, four jars of dill pickles, and a dozen tiny gift jars of my great grandmother's chunk pickles. I will share none of those recipes exactly (because the only one that is *mine* is Nana G's chunk pickles and she passed away in 2008. I got the recipe two weeks ago. It's 2014.) I will however give you a bastardized version of sweet pickles that I am going to attempt next.

Fwigf Sweet Present Pickles

You will need:

12 half-pint jars
About 6 or 7 good sized cucumbers
12 Allspice seed/ball things
Tumeric
1/2 cup Brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
3 cinnamon sticks (broken into quarters)
celery seed
mustard seed (I used Garlic Mustard seeds, I'll explain those later)
1/4 sweet onion
1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Sea salt
2 cups water
a caner of some kind.

First things first. Sterilize your jars and lids. Combine the vinegar, salt, water, and sugar (both kinds) and bring it to a boil. This is your brine. Wash your cucumbers and slice them up into 1/4-1/2 inch slices. Cut your onion into chunks. Into the jars place 1 allspice seed/ball thing, 1/4 of a cinnamon stick, a couple pieces of onion, a pinch of celery seed, a pinch of mustard seed, and a pinch of tumeric. Pack your cucumber slices into the jars and cover with the sweet brine. Screw on the lids and process in your water bath caner. I did about 10 minutes at a rolling boil. Remove and set on a towel to cool.

Now then, what the heck is garlic mustard?

Garlic mustard is a noxious weed. It is invasive and very Very prolific right on the edges of forests. It is also edible, tasty, and packed full of nutrients. It comes into season in the early summer, the leaves are tasty and you can treat them like spinach, the roots are also edible but I haven't tried them. In the mid-late summer their seed pods mature. The seeds make a very strong, very tasty, mustard. The flavor is very close to a spicy brown mustard with a hint of garlic after taste. So, delicious, nutritious, free, and doing your local ecosystem a favor by removing it? Yes. Go eat garlic mustard. It's out of season now, but next summer you'll be prepared. Won't you?