"Experiment" while you are able

Every year, as a part of our growing homestead, we find something to experiment with. A new vegetable, a new method of preserving, sewing...

One of our grand experiments this year is pickling with brine.

While aiding my mother clean out her basement, I (as I always do) keep an eye out for things that could be useful to us. And there, deep in the recesses of her shelves, my eyes alighted upon my grandmother's old pickling crock. My dad had kept a lot of his father's old tools (now most of those are mine), but he kept his mother's pickling crock?

No matter...it would save me $40, plus shipping and handling (since no store around here sells that stuff).

I brought it home and cleaned it up. It sat in our kitchen for a while, doing nothing, until I got the nerve to try pickling in it. Which was yesterday. The weather had suddenly turned cool, and our cucumbers have suddenly started producing like mad. I had enough cukes to fill the bottom of the crock, and the vines had dozens of tiny ones just being born....it was now, or never.

I put the cucumbers in the bottom with some garlic (from our garden), pepper corns and onion (I don't have any dill, and I'm not a big fan of it anyway). Then I went outside, grabbed a couple of leaves off our grape vine...in my study, I learned that the tannin in the grape leaves keeps the pickles from getting mushy. I put those on top. Add a plate and a weight, then cover with brine. Most recipes that I read suggested a pint of salt per gallon of water. A pint is about 2 1/3 dry cup, so this means a little over a cup for every 1/2 gallon. Then I covered with a pretty peice of cloth (which, by the way, did not keep the pretty princess out of it...she had to know what mom was doing).

In a week, we shall see what comes of this.


The reasons for pickling in brine are: I have heard its healthier. Other than that, though, I have previously pickled in vinegar, and frankly...I didn't care for it much.

If you aren't as lucky as us to have old homesteading grandparents who are the children and grandchildren of pioneers, you can find pickling crocks through Lehman's catalogue.


Lehman's catalogue: http://www.lehmans.com/store/catalog?Args=

If you type "Crock" into the search engine, you will get a miriad of results. You will want to look for the numbered pickling crocks.