I fear I may be condemned by my community for what I’m about to say but…I need it to rain. Just for a few days so I can sow a row of carrots for a fall harvest. This summer weather has been fantastic – I was even out shopping for inflatable beach toys yesterday and they were sold out everywhere! My only complaint is that the soil needs to maintain a certain level of moisture in order for seeds to germinate and I could water morning and night but by noon, in this heat, even in the most compost rich soils, the top 1/2 inch where the seeds lie will be bone dry and dusty. I do have a day job so I have to depend on mother nature like day care to watch over my little seedlings and I don’t use a drip system because…well…our natural weather pattern is a drip system. I’ll keep watching the forecast and keep the seeds on hand for a patch of wet weather which we all know is coming right? (Now I’ve done it - I’ve crossed a line and I’ll probably be pelted with rotten fruit the next time I show my face)
In the mean time I’ve been happily occupied with experiments in pickling. My mom has now effectively instilled a healthy fear of botulism contamination in me which will keep me from stepping outside the safe lines of pickles and jam – oh and mustard. Canning, without a pressure canner, is not on my to do list but pickles are so much fun.
So far my favorite tip in pickling is to boil a pot of onions before you make a batch of pickles – how ever many onions will fill one of your pickle jars. Then, use the onion broth instead of water to dilute the vinegar by the ratio in your pickle recipe. At the same time, pickle the onions too!
I picked just enough small beats to fill one pickle jar.
And my onions are plumping but some are still small enough to pickle whole.
There aren’t enough green beens yet to fill a jar so I stuffed just a few in with the onions and I ran out of white venegar so the cider vinegar will have to do.
The recipes I used are from Carol Hupping’s third edition of America’s classic preserving guide – Stocking up (see bookshelf).
