Day 1 of Pickling/Preserving (Hot Water Bath Method)

The cat, neglected all day,
camps on my chest as I write.

I have just spent the past nine hours, more or less, reviewing my pickling recipes and plans, doing the last shopping, and making pickles, and now I'm beat! As I post, I listen to the satisfying pinging of the lids as they sea to the jars, and I try not to dislodge the cat on my chest. I last made pickles when I was 17 and I remember making quarts and quarts of garlic dills. Today I made four pints of pickled beets, one pint of pickled carrots, one pint of pickled beets and carrots, and three less-than successful half-pints of pickled strawberries. I can already tell the strawberries were less than successful because when I look at the jars I see mostly liquid with a few berries floating on top. Looks like my berries pretty much disintegrated. But I bet the liquid in them will make some interesting cocktails!

All the recipe books and web recipes

The main reason it took me so long to make so little is that I just couldn't settle on recipes. Last time I used my mother and grandmother's garlic dill recipe and that was that. No fussing about which spices to use in my pickling spice, which vinegar to use, which sugar and how much. Today was just fraught. At least three times I picked a recipe that really looked good and made it all the way till the final review before noticing that it was a refrigerator pickle recipe. I don't want refrigerator pickles. I want hot-water-bath processed pickles that will last a year or so. Unfortunately recipes that fit that criterion also specifically written for carrots, beets and strawberries aren't thick on the ground. But as Dave (and his t-shirt) like to say: I improvised, I adapted, I overcame. (Really, he has that on a t-shirt now).

My first pass at pickling spice

The biggest challenge came after I got all the jars full of produce and brine and I couldn't get the hot water bath to boil! We have a Jenn-Air range with one of those flat electric tops up here in Polson, and I don't think it made enough contact with the bottom of the huge canning pot for the water to boil. So in the middle of canning I made an emergency trip to Walmart to get a smaller stock pot for the hot water bath. When I got home Dave remarked that I could also use the gas burner with the propane tank on the back deck... The stainless stock pots I got at Walmart will make nice dye pots. I used the canning rig on the gas burner--just like my mom, grandmother and grandfather used to do.

Results from Day 1

Tomorrow I will make traditional garlic dill and bread and butter pickles, pickled morels, and a whopping big batch of rhubarb chutney. I hope it to get a better showing in output than I did today!