First 2011 Dill Pickles
The garden continues to keep us busy with watering, weeding, harvesting and canning. The snow peas have finished after generously providing 14 quarts of delicious pods of which I’ve blanched and frozen 10 quarts for later enjoyment. Today, Jacob removed these spent plants and will till the area tomorrow, preparing it for planting more cream peas.
This is a picture of the season’s first batch of dill pickles using my grandmother’s recipe. Slices of these crunchy dills on a ham sandwich with lettuce and fresh tomatoes bring back memories of sandwiches my grandmother brought out to her pond where I was often found fishing. We would laugh and talk as we ate sandwiches and sipped homemade lemonade. These are very precious memories.
After today’s harvest, I have enough cucumbers for a batch of bread-n-butter pickles using a recipe I found which substitutes Splenda for sugar. I’m anxious to try it and share with other diabetic family members. I also found a recipe for Splenda sweet relish I’ll be canning along with more dill pickles in the coming weeks. Thankfully, we have plenty of flourishing cucumber and dill plants.
Shirl
By chris Wed Apr 30th 2014 at 9:43 pm
Trying to resurrect an old family pickle recipe of my grand mothers. They looked a lot like these. Would you mind sharing the recipe?
By shirlsu Thu May 1st 2014 at 6:40 pm
These turned out very much like my grandmother’s. If you don’t have access to fresh heads of dill, 1 tsp per jar of dill seed can be substituted, though fresh dill is best. The recipe is easy:
8 lbs small cucumbers
1 qt cider vinegar
2 qts water
3/4 cup canning salt
12 or so heads of fresh dill
12 cloves garlic, peeled
Wash the cucumbers well, being sure to remove the blossom ends. Pack the cucumbers gently but firmly into clean, hot quart jars, putting 2 heads of dill and 2 garlic cloves in each. Heat the vinegar, water and salt to boiling. Pour the boiling liquid to fill the jars and let them stand 15 minutes. Pour the liquid from the jars back into the pan and heat to boiling again. Then pour the liquid back into the jars to within 1/2″ of the tops. Wipe off the tops and threads with a damp cloth. Put on prepared lids and seal as the manufacturer recommends. Process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes. Makes 6 quarts.