Pickling Predicament

Who would have guessed that putting up a couple dozen jars of dill pickles would take a small miracle and frustrating, exhausting search for fresh vine ripened cucumbers and half gallon wide mouth canning jars. I had to travel to Cloquet to get the 6 jars they had in stock.

Apparently my sister Chris visiting from Seattle who is a self admitted food and wine snob is also a pretty tough cucumber critic, of the 120 pounds of pickling cucumbers I acquired through a shall remain nameless food distributor only 15 pounds were pickle worthy. They must be blemish free, not unlike our mates and not torpedo shaped lest it yield overly seedy pickles. So says Chris.

When we fell so far short of pickles I made a frantic call to a farmer I know and I was able to get about 10 pounds of freshly picked gherkins. My good friend Dean was kind enough to pick them up and run them out. He has been my go to guy for all things emergency for quite some time. He's the best!

I must admit I thought pickling was going to be a very difficult and tiresome job. I couldn't have been more wrong. In the time it took for my sister and I to drink a lovely bottle of Cabernet the first batch was totally processed. Fabulous!

At this point I have no idea what went into making these pickles except damn near a full tank of gas, visits to three cities and at least 6 stores looking for jars and cucumbers that measured up to my sisters impossibly high cucumber expectations. All in all a very good first pickling experience!