I was on the phone this morning with my Moms. She made bread and butter pickles this weekend for her bad self and for my brothers. Nary a sweet pickle in sight for her only-est (yup, I made up a word) girl-child. her excuse: I can't mail you a jar of pickles. The heck you can't. She clearly has never heard of Pickle-licious.
Be that as it may, I got a wild hair -- what with all the excess cucumbers I have -- to make a batch of my own bread and butters. So after a phone consult, I felt capable of giving it a turn.
Tonight after schmoozing with men in the spice section of the local grocery (who knew so many well-dressed guys liked to make pickles?), I had the essential celery and mustard seeds that weren't already in my spice box. When I got home, I went straight to the garden to pluck a couple more cukes and got ready to pickle like the domestic goddess I am.
Fortunately, I had some glass jars on hand (we're not actually canning them as they won't be around that long and will be refrigerated rather than shelved). I washed them and sterilized them with boiling water then washed and sliced my cucumbers and sweet onions, them left them to drain in salt (1Tbs to 7-8 cucumbers and two onions sliced) for an hour (a lot of recipes call for three hours, but we do one and it's just as tasty). I discovered I had no tumeric, so crazy gal that I am I substituted a really nice curry powder. Yummy!
While the pickles were draining, I mixed up the sweet brine and set it to boil. After squeezing the life out of those salted cukes and onions in a cheesecloth, I dumped them in the sweet brine to simmer for 10 minutes. Et Voila! Bread and butter pickles, ready to be jarred and stored in the fridge for those special relish tray occasions!
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