Pickle Joy!

There is something so primal, so satisfying to me about canning. To have a pantry full of sparkling glass jars, full of good things to eat when summer is long gone, is my security blanket. Last night, I made our year's supply of bread & butter pickles:

It's hot work, what with a steaming canning kettle and one of simmering vinegar solution, plus a pan with lids and rings bubbling away on the back burner. But immensely satisfying, as if I alone have the power to feed my family despite any impending future famine.

I made my first jam in 1973, when visiting my college roommate in Oregon. It was plum, and I was fascinated and hooked. I threw myself into it with abandon when I got home, without adequate research, I'm ashamed to admit. I canned lamb stew in a water bath around 1976, not realizing that meats and vegetables required pressure canning. Luckily my mother called me when the jar I had given her started oozing and smelling bad, and I narrowly avoided fatally poisoning anyone. After that debacle, I was off to the library and agriculture extension office, and I learned how to do it properly.

For a long time, I canned everything from our big garden--tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans (pickled, to avoid the pressure canning), zucchini. I made salsa and spaghetti sauce, crab apple jelly, applesauce, even mango chutney when I found a box on sale. Then sometime in the late 1990s, I started to calm down. The pantry was bursting at the seams, I realized that a #10 can of tomatoes cost about $2 (as opposed to my quart jars of tomatoes, which probably cost about $5 apiece), the kids were growing up and didn't eat applesauce at every meal anymore, and I had jars of jelly in the closet that were 10 years old and turning brown. The whole point of preserving food was to avoid waste, and here I was, wasting food, the ultimate sin.

Like all things Pam, I had taken the bit and gone totally overboard. Bill made the rule at that point--preserve no more than we can eat in a year. It's a good rule. So now with our two-person family, 6 quarts of pickles seems like just enough.

And as I sat knitting after removing the jars from the stockpot last night, listening for the "tink-pop" of the lids sealing down as they cooled, I felt...smug.

Zesty & Crunchy Bread & Butter Pickles

5 Quarts Cucumbers, cut into 1/2 inch chunks

4 Medium Onions, sliced thinly

1/2 cup Kosher salt

In a large bowl, sprinkle cut cucumbers and onions with salt, cover with ice cubes, let sit for 2-3 hours. Drain and rinse thoroughly. Pack tightly into hot, washed, quart jars.

In a large pot, combine and simmer:

6 cups Cider Vinegar

4 cups sugar

4 teaspoons each: celery seed, mustard seed, and prepared horseradish

2 teaspoons each: turmeric, ground ginger and whole black peppercorns

Pour into jars, release any air bubbles, adjust caps, and process in water bath for 15 minutes.

Let sit in a cool, dark place for at least 6 weeks before opening.