illdothedisheslater

“I need you to eat a small pickle in the interest of science.”

This is the kind of crazy shit your pickle-hating husband has to deal with when you spend your time the way I do.  I mean – there are certainly worse things in a marriage than coerced pickle-eating.  Secret credit cards, adultery, workaholism, Duke basketball fans, people who say “An historical..”, flat-brim baseball cap wearers, those who leave the bathroom door open…  I could be way worse.  So he has to eat a pickle from time to time.  And I hide canning jars under large pieces of furniture.  And there’s a mystery box downstairs delivered from a restaurant supply warehouse full of things I definitely do not need.  He’s generally kind enough to ignore these small marital infractions.  He ate the pickle, is what I’m saying.

Why pickles?  Why not?  I like pickles.  And a grocery here had pickling cucumbers on sale, which you almost never see for sale, much less on sale.  Instead of winging it, I went for the easy option and purchased Mrs. Wages Kosher Dill Refrigerator Pickle Mix – canning made easy!  Pickling also afforded me an opportunity to purchase more canning jars – I needed the wide mouth jars for this – and I love buying canning jars.  Weird little thing that makes me happy.  It’s the little things in life, really.  The package calls for 2 lbs. of pickling (or salad) cucumbers, one pouch of pickling mix, 2 cups of water, and ¾ cups of Mrs. Wages White Distilled Vinegar.  Easy enough.  I heft a gallon jug of Mrs. Wages White Distilled Vinegar into my cart.

Hang on.

Three-fourths of a cup?  And you only sell gallon jugs.  You aren’t fooling me Mrs. Wages.  Back on the shelf you go.  Regular old white vinegar for $.99 is good enough for me.

This is pretty easy actually – the hardest part is figuring out which end of the cuke is the blossom end, which needs to be trimmed off.  And thanks to the internet, that’s done in a jiffy.

The blossom end is the brownish and smaller.  The stem end is whitish and larger.

Trim the blossom end off and cut your cukes into spears (or slices – it’s your life.  I do both.)  The spears have to be short enough to fit in the jar, not touch the top, and get covered with the brine.

Mrs. Wages instructs me to boil her packet of mix with the vinegar and water.  I do this.

The cucumbers get packed into the prepared jars (nobody wants to watch me boil jars again do they?  I find it relaxing and almost therapeutic, but it doesn’t make for good blogging.) Note: I do not pack them tightly enough, but learned something for next time.  You need to pack them in so they don’t float to the top, leaving precious millimeters of cucumber out of the brine, resulting in flaccid, under-seasoned pickles.  Tragedy!  The jars are supposed to be hot while you do this, which makes for some quick and tricky work.  Luckily as I’ve mentioned before, my hands are made of iron and practically impervious to heat.

Pour the hot brine into the hot jars.  Mrs. W advises that her mix makes four pints of delicious pickles.  I eke out three – barely.

One week later the verdict from Mr. Dishes?

“They taste like pickles.”

He’s right – they’re pretty good.  Mrs. Wages may be a greedy-guts vinegar empire billionaire, but she seems to know her pickles.