Pickles Come From Cucumbers

The kids couldn’t believe that a dill pickle was actually a cucumber. I can remember the same bewilderment when my Mom told me the same thing about pickles and cucumbers. So, Dill Pickles we made. The recipe came from a neighbor, and used, what I thought were, exotic ingredients, like grape leaves and garlic. Low and behold, there are grape leaves growing wild in our backyard up here at the lake too. My only mistake, back then, was that the recipe said to cut pickles in fourths — I cut it along the length, into chuncks. So, they looked funny. Today, mine look much nicer. Let’s just hope they taste as good.

It was time to make the same thing with the kids. Making dill pickles is an easy project to do with kids, as you don’t need to pressurize the jars, and all of the scary canning stuff. So, we found a suitable cucumber hanging around in the garden.

1. We sterlized a canning jar,
2. cut the cucumber (2) into spears. The recipe says to blanch the cucumbers — but I skipped that step. We’re going for “crunchy dills.”
3. We added a clove of garlic,
4. and some sprigs of dill we found growing wild in the garden.
5. We loaded the jar, and added water to the top. Then, we poured out the water to see how much we have — two and a half cups. That means we add 1.5 tablespoons of canning salt. Add salt to poured out water, stir, and add salt water back into pickle jar.
6. Then, we added a wild grape leaf, we found that growing in the backyard too. This helps the fermentation begin.
7. We covered the jar with a cloth, and we wait for two weeks.