Sweet "Bread & Butter" Pickles

Oh, boy.  Oh, boy oh boy.  This post has been in the works for over a week because we had to wait for the product to ripen before we could taste test it.  And they are good!

We were moved to finally make our own homemade pickles (which we have been wanting to do for a long time now but just never got around to it) because we have a very generous neighbor who leaves bags of freshly grown and picked produce on our door at least once every couple of weeks throughout the summer.  Case in point, we still have three gallon-size Ziploc bags of green beans in the freezer.  Yum.  He apparently grew a LOT of green beans this year.  :)  Anyways, there were also a lot of cucumbers -- too many for us to eat before they went bad.  So....pickle time!!!

We searched the Interwebs for recipes, and surprise, surprise, settled on one from our favorite wacky mad-scientist chef: Alton Brown.  It's called Ab's B and B's, which of course we amended given the ingredients that we had on hand when we finally got to work.  For example, we didn't have Pickling Spice, so we Googled to find out what the various mixes would contain, and then concocted our own from there.

Here's how we did it....

INGREDIENTS

• 2 medium cucumbers, thinly sliced (I couldn't say exactly how many or how much we actually used -- we just chopped some of the cucumbers that we had until we were satisfied that it was enough to mostly fill the jars that we were going to use)
• 1/2 onion, thinly sliced
• Garlic cloves (however many you like - we like more than the "norm")
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• A pinch of kosher salt
• Bay leaves - 4
• Whole Cloves (see picture below for how much - we didn't measure)
• Whole black peppercorns (see picture below for how much - we didn't measure)
• Juniper berries (see picture below for how much - we didn't measure)
• Cinnamon Sticks - I think we used 2 or 3, broken into pieces

PROCESS

1.  Combine the liquids (water and apple cider vinegar), the sugar, and all spices in a pot.  Bring it to a boil, then allow it to simmer for about five minutes to "wake up" the flavors of the spices.

2.  Meanwhile, slice up your cucumbers and onions.

 

3.  Transfer the cooked pickling liquid (spices and all) to a container with a spout (such as a large measuring cup or a pitcher) for easy pouring.  Fill your jars with alternating layers of cucumbers and onions, with a garlic clove thrown in here and there.  Then slowly pour the still hot pickling liquid (spices and all) into each jar until everything is covered.

4.  When the liquid is cooled, cover your jars and pop them into the refrigerator.  (By the way, you could be using screw top jars, spring-top jars, or whatever kind of jars you like or have on hand -- you can see that we are using old salsa jars.)

5.  This is the hard part -- Wait a whole week.  (I took it upon myself to shake about the jars every few days, to make sure all the cucumber and onion slices were still completely submerged in the liquid, and that the spices were distributed all around and not clumped in any one area.  This step wasn't in the recipe we worked from, so I doubt it's really necessary.  But I got to feel like I was doing something and helping the process along.)

6.  Finally, after you have waited the prescribed amount of time, bust open those jars and munch.

Your pickles will keep for a couple of months in the refrigerator.

THE REVIEW

I was surprised by how much sugar there was in this recipe, so much so that I even ask Hubby if he had forgotten to dump it in the pan (I didn't think that much sugar would have dissolved so quickly and easily).  But they are, after all, sweet pickles.  And have to say, for essentially winging it on the spices, they came out delicious.  We will most certainly be making out own pickles again, if not every time, from now on.  I mean, really, which ones here look better and would you prefer (plus contain no preservatives or other nonsense)?

Garlic, Garlic, and more Garlic

A couple years ago, we were originally planning to take a vacation and drive across the country to the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California.  Finances, new jobs, and lack of vacation time, etc. caused that particular adventure remain on our "to do someday" list, and we instead decided to check out a more local event.  So, last weekend, we finally made a trip to the annual Southern Vermont Garlic & Herb Festival in Bennington, VT.

We knew that it wouldn't be anything like what goes on in Gilroy, and that's quite okay.  Bennington, VT, after all, isn't the "garlic capital of the world" that Gilroy is  ;)  What we experienced was in most ways exactly what we expected  and definitely worth the modest admission fee, but in one aspect a tad disappointing.  Here's the scoop....

Guided by volunteers wearing garlic hats and waving pool noodles (cute touch), we parked our car on the huge grassy field, and proceeded to the gates where we paid the $5 each to enter.  In exchange, we received neat-o hand stamps:

Seriously, I thought the stamp was cool.  I'm an oddball, whatever.  =P

As advertised, there was everything from garlic ice cream to garlic jelly, pickled garlic, roasted garlic, garlic braids, and, of course, plain garlic bulbs of every variety for sampling and purchase.  There was even a vendor making garlic lemonade (which unfortunately we not get to try).  There were demonstrations happening throughout the day (braiding, planting, a Home Depot kids workshop, etc), but we didn't get involved in that particular stuff.  There were also plenty of non-garlic-centric items available for sample and/or purchase -- such as arts & crafts, foods & beverage products, and even one vendor selling Vitamix blenders.  Essentially, it was like a giant farmers' market, with if I am remembering correctly, at least 10 long rows of tents all set up selling their various wares.  Being that it's Vermont, there were also lots of maple-based items.  There was a separate section where you could buy freshly prepared food, and in that same area was a band playing and a hay maze for the kiddos.  Finally, there was an absolutely huge and very, very interesting antique store on the grounds - I think they own the land on which the festival took place.  We spent a good amount of time browsing in there.

Anyways, we walked around most of the festival grounds, sampling things here and there, before making decisions and going back to purchase stuff.  We tried....

Various garlic and other oils and dips.  All very delicious.

Garlic fudge.  Quite interesting.

Black Garlic Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies.  We got the second to last bag of them.
They weren't bad at all, and the garlic seemed to give them a very moist, creamy texture.

Roasted Garlic Ice Cream.  Look, you can see the bits of garlic in there.
It was tasty, and I would absolutely eat this again.  It kind of reminded me of
one of the Tastefully Simply dips.  Weird, I know.  But it really was unexpectedly good.

And the be all and end all of stuff we sampled that day -- Deep Fried Garlic Cloves!!!
Oh.  My.  God.  So.  Awesome.  'Nuff.  Said.
I had expected them to be breaded or battered before, but they weren't, and it wasn't necessary at all.
Imagine, though, if they were?  Wow.  Maybe that will have to be an at-home foodventure sometime.

We tasted lots of other stuff, too, but just couldn't take pictures of it all.

Around noontime, we moseyed on over to the prepared foods/hay maze/band area and got lunch.  This, as I mentioned above, is where the disappointment of the day came into play.  I would have expected the things that people were cooking and selling here to be more, I don't know, special?  Some examples of things that were being served, but that I thought were too common, were garlic naan at the Indian food vendor, garlic sausages, and the thing I ordered and was not happy with: a garlic hamburger, which amounted to nothing more than a hamburger with some garlic slapped on top as if it were relish.  Boooo.  Definitely not Gilroy.

Overall, it was a nice time and I am glad that we went, but I see no need to make the three and a half hour drive to attend this event again.  Ironically, even though we are huge garlic fans and very much enjoyed the garlic-y treats that we sampled that day, nothing that we bought to take home (for ourselves) was garlic.  We bought a bottle of maple liqueur (soooo good), a jar of strawberry habanero jelly (wait until you see what we did with that last night!), two other jars of jelly from that same vendor, spicy pickles for a friend, fudge (normal, not garlic) for another friend, and a garlic sampler for a third friend.  I also went back to one craftsman to pick up a wicked cool steampunk-ish pepper grinder that I spotted earlier in the day, but by the time I got there, it was gone.  Oh, well.  In the end, the shopping bag ended up pleasantly heavy with our spoils.  :)