Pickles.

I’ve never really liked pickles.  I only like dill pickles; that is it. For whatever reason, it took me an inordinate amount of time to learn the names of the different varieties. Apparently remembering “dill pickle” is really hard, because I constantly find myself accidentally eating a sweet pickle or bread & butter pickle and subsequently gagging. I’ve pretty much swore off anything pickled.

So, when my friend Danielle brought homemade pickles to  community gardening time a few weeks ago, I was stuck. I wanted to try them because I wanted to be supportive. I also wanted to ensure that I didn’t make a face of complete disgust in front of her. I prefaced my taste test: “I’ve never really liked pickles, so if I don’t like these, it’s probably not because your pickles are gross.”

Amazingly, I liked them. They were dill pickles, so my main fear was assuaged. They were spicy, too, so they were special. They were also pretty.

The garden (like most American gardens, I’m sure) is currently overflowing with cucumbers. We have quite a few pickling cucumbers (I just learned that there was a difference between pickling cucumbers and cucumbers for eating…who knew?), so I decided to take some and try to make them. Part of my motivation for this was that my new roommate loves pickles. Seriously. Sometimes she eats entire jars. Making these pickles would: 1) get rid of some cucumbers 2) Give me a chance to try something new 3) Make Katie happy.

As the recipe shows (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spicy-Refrigerator-Dill-Pickles/Detail.aspx?prop31=2), these pickles aren’t really canned. They’re refrigerator pickles, which means they need to be stored in glass jars with lids in the fridge for 10 days. Then, they have to be eaten with a month. I didn’t actually need jars that could seal for this.

I have a seemingly endless supply of glass Mason jars from all the canned green beans Grandma Pat provides me with, but I didn’t have any lids for them, so I couldn’t use them. I could have bought jars from the store, but that seemed wasteful since I didn’t specifically need canning jars.  So, always frugal, I sent out a few emails to ask some friends if they had any old glass jars laying around. The deal: lend me a jar, and I’ll give it back to you with pickles.

Friends responded quickly; apparently people love pickles. After mixing together all the ingredients, I had to let the cucumber slices soak for 2 hours. Near the end of the 2 hour mark, I got a call asking if I wanted to go see the movie Inception. I responded with something like “No, I’m sorry. I’ve really got to get these pickles in their jars tonight.” How I still have friends is beyond me.

As always happens when trying something new, I had a few concerns about the pickles. First, I didn’t have pickling spice and I didn’t really want to go to the store to get any. Instead, I just looked up what was in pickling spice online and added the spices that I had in the cabinet. One of them was cinnamon…weird.  Second, even though I did the proportions the recipe called for, I ran out of liquid to fill the jars with. So, a few jars into the process, I started adding vinegar and water and a few spices. I thought this might water down the pickles’ flavor. Finally, I thought the pickles might have a hint of peanut butter or spaghetti sauce or whatever the jars had had in them previously.

The pickles 10-day wait time fell right in the middle of the move, but they survived. They were ready on Thursday, the day my mom was helping me clean the old apartment. After cleaning, my mom and I went to my new house for a quick lunch. After we finished lunch and my dad came to pick my mom up (and to give me a ride up the hill to work), we tried them. My dad likes pickles and spicy things, so theoretically, he would like these. He’s also a little…umm…how to say this nicely…picky about his food sometimes, though. And since I hadn’t tried them first, I was kind of nervous.  I liked them, though. He also said he liked them and took a jar home. We’ll see if he still likes them after I call him picky in the blog-o-sphere.

Later that night, we went to the Burger Stand for dinner. They serve a spear pickle with their burgers. My pickles were way better. I know they specialize in burgers (and can definitely make a better burger than I ever will) and not in homemade pickles, but still…I felt accomplished.