Pickling Everything

Left to right: Half Sour pickle, Kosher Pickle, Sauerkraut and Kimchi.

I am currently in the process of learning how to pickle things. I took a class on fermented foods this weekend in which I learned how to make small batch pickled foods like Kosher Dills, Sauerkraut and Kimchi, which sit on your counter for one to six weeks like little pets. Besides being really informative and fun, the class gave me the confidence that I needed to continue on my own.

With the fermentation method your pickles need to breath so you cover the jar with a cloth or napkin to keep out dust (or dog hair). It's a little like making beer.

I have canned several fruits and jams but I have never pickled anything. I know pickling seems pretty basic, but since both my Mother and my Grandmother really hated cooking anything that wasn't absolutely necessary, they never got into any long process cooking activities. Such are the pitfalls of growing up in the Betty Crocker era.

Then as I had a family and set up my own pantry, I looked and asked around for information on pickling and there was very little. Sure there were a few old books, but really what I needed was some hands on instruction to build my confidence.

These cucumbers are wedged into the shoulders of the jars so they won't float up out of the brine and spoil. You want at least an inch of brine above the vegetables for the fermentation process.

 

 

With small chopped things like this Kraut and Kimchi you will need to have something that holds down the vegetables. Here our class was taught to use a ziplock baggy full of the brine to hold down the chopped cabbage. You fill the bag with brine instead of water so that if it leaks into the jar it does not dilute the fermenting pickles and cause spoilage.

Our County Extension office, which was severely underfunded for the last decade, has started teaching again. That is because of our states resurgent interest in food growing and preservation. Now they are adequately funded to give food preservation classes. Hooray! It pays to vote.

These are some Pickled Spicy Beets that our Extension Agent and students canned at another class.

Tomatillos,carrots and beets slated for pickling.

I am in the process of planning to pickle everything I can think of. I feel completely capable now, and they gave me a "hot line" phone number to call if I feel my confidence wavering, or if my pickles get slimy

This picture makes me feel sick.

I really love pickles but have not been able to eat them for a long time because EVERYONE puts onions and garlic in their pickles and I am allergic to the Allium family, i.e. onions and garlic. It's made me very sad (and sick) until now. Now I can make pickled foods without the offending ingredients and eat them to my hearts content.

The class instructors were very vehement about following only research based recipes, since the acidity of ingredients can vary drastically, which can in turn allow dangerous bacteria to grow in your pickles. Research based recipes are the ones that you will get from Universities and Extension offices. Ball Blue Book of Home Canning is another reliable source and was recommended.

Our OSU Extension Office has an excellent PDF on "Pickling Vegetables"
Another good recipe book is from the Clemson Cooperative Extension "Pickling Foods"
There is also a PDF from Iowa State about pickling and the National Center for Home Food Preservation site which is recommended by our extension office.

Grooming Products of My Ancestors

 

Walking the dogs out in the woods is always an adventure. I just never know what we will be discovering.
Take the other day for instance. I was walking in the back woods, admiring the moss and ferns, when a bit of green glass caught my eye. I dug around the roots of a Fir tree and found an old 7 Up bottle. I dug a little more and found several more cans and bottles. It was an old dump site. Not exactly Pioneer Days judging by the hair products. They were super fun to read though.

Sculpting The Landscape

One of the jobs that I have taken on this summer is keeping the usable space we have reclaimed, from the blackberry vines and Scotch Broom, clear.

We have lots of open areas that we would like to keep that way. One of my current projects is to keep the blackberries from tip rooting and gaining more space. I walk around the Homestead with a pair of professional grade hand clippers (I don't mess around with the 12 pairs of crummy ones I own any more) in my leather holster and every time I see a long tendril of tender Himalayan Blackberry reaching for more real estate I whack it off.

Buck has invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears into clearing some major mounds of blackberry and I have been keeping them in check, starving the roots by continually harassing the sprouts with my boot heel and the mower. It seems to be working. They send up fewer and skinnier sprouts each time.

Another ongoing strategy I have adopted is that when I am walking the property for any reason I pull as many small Scotch Broom as I can with my gloved hands. My currant record is 150 in an hour. I admit some of them were barely bigger than a pencil, but hey, they would have just become bigger and bigger, throwing their seed far and wide.

One thing Buck started and I have expanded on is the art of Landscape Architecture by mower.

It lifts the spirit to have visible results with some real impact on our and our guests quality of life. I have created all kinds of walking paths through grass that is now shoulder high. It's so fun to walk along these "garden paths" with company or the dogs in the evening.

I have also created little "rooms" under trees and in random clearings to rest in the shade or just look into. It is really only a fraction of the mowing I do and it gives me a lovely break from brush mowing.

I mowed around the upper burn pile for safety but in the process found myself imagining what it would look like from an airplane and found myself mowing what amounts to a giant spiral crop circle.

Unfortunately, foraying into unknown territory with the mower around here has its problem spots full of limbs, rocks, wire and bailing twine. It's something like being a steam boat captain on the Columbia.

Only, luckily, my mower doesn't sink when I hit all that junk.