Sparkle Kitchen: Pickles
In this week’s Martin & Sylvia story "Thank You's", Mr. Brown teaches Martin the secret to being a good farmer — to be thankful. Martin is excited to be more thankful at home, but he returns to see that his cat, Pickles, has ripped his favorite toy. How can he be thankful when he is feeling so mad?
I’ve experienced that feeling many times with my own dog. While it’s frustrating to loose prized possessions, it always helps me to remember that he doesn’t ruin my things to be mean. He’s not being bad, he’s just being a dog. Or, in Pickles case, a cat.
In tribute to forgiving Pickles for his transgressions — and in the spirit of being thankful for a good harvest, too — a recipe for quick, refrigerator pickles.
Unlike with a canned recipe, these pickles must be stored in the fridge, but because you’ll refrigerate them, you can be more creative than with the ingredients. This is my favorite, basic recipe, but feel free to add extra herbs, or even some onion if you like.
They’ll keep for a few weeks, but we’ve never had a batch last that long.
Basic Refrigerator Pickles
Ingredients
1 cup water
1 cup white wine vinegar
2 Tablespoons salt
2 Tablespoons pickling spice
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 cucumbers, sliced
2 pint-sized, clean glass jars, or similarly sized containers
Directions
Add the water, vinegar, salt, and pickling spice to a sauce pan to make a brine. Bring the pot to a boil, stirring to dissolve the salt. Remove from the heat.
As the brine is cooking, wash and slice 2 cumbers and add them to the jars. Add a crushed clove of garlic to each jar, too.
Working carefully — the brine should still be hot — use a canning funnel to pour the brine over the pickles to fill the jar. Cover the jars with lids, and put the pickles in the fridge for at least 24 hours before eating.
One last thing — the puckeriness of pickles is a matter of extreme personal taste, but one trick to reduce the pucker a bit is to run your pickles under cold water for about 30 seconds before eating them.
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About the Author
Meryl Carver-Allmond
The Sparkle Kitchen Series is created by Meryl Carver-Allmond.
Meryl lives in a hundred-year-old house near the prairie with her sweet husband, two preschoolers, one puppy, one gecko, and about ten chickens. While she's been writing since she could pick up a pen, in recent years she's discovered the joy of photography, too. She feels lucky to be able to combine those skills, along with a third passion — showing people that cooking for themselves can be healthy and fun — in her Sparkle Kitchen posts.
