Bread & Butter Pickles

On Saturday, after an evening of dancing and a morning of carbohydrate overload, I convinced T he wanted to go to the Trout Lake farmers market for the 15 minutes before it closed. It's not that it's hard to convince him to do these things, but considering how we were feeling, I felt it was a sacrifice on his part to not just go home and lie in bed. Anyhoo - off we trotted to the farmer's market and while T parked the car I started exploring. Lo and behold, I found the first of the seasons cucumbers! Not pickling cukes these, no no. These were perfectly shaped bread and butter pickle sized cucumbers. I quickly loaded up a bag of 6 pounds worth, feeling like I was making off with the prize jewels and carted the beauties off home (wondering when I would have a chance to pickle them).

The next morning, H and I were supposed to go hiking, but she had to cancel, and T was going out on a motorcycle ride, so suddenly hours of the day were open to me. What better to do then start pickling at 9am? Very soon my kitchen looked like this.


Again, I took a page out of Tart and Sweet, which I continue to love. Kelly and Jessie's voices remind me so much of Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones & Butter. This may mean it's just a very New York flavour - but you can't get enough of a good thing.

This recipe was really easy to follow, and I appreciated how much less sugar it had then many others. I fear too much of my vinegar evaporated while it was boiling, because I ended up having to do another half batch of the apple cider/rice vinegar/salt/sugar mixture. Also, I couldn't for the life of me find brown rice vinegar, so I had to go with the run of the mill kind. But from what googling tells me, this should turn out okay. Fortunately I remembered to check for air bubbles, but I'm a bit surprised that my pickles are floating in my jars with about a half inch of space underneath them. I assume that this is related to some kind of scientific thingy that I didn't study enough in high school and trust that all is well (I seem to do a lot of that).

I'm going to let these pickle for about a month, but I'm not even sure I can wait that long. For those who are like me, and from time to time need a quick fix: check out Jessie's recently posted recipe for quick pickles. They're not bread and butter, but in a pinch they look delish.

Anyway, T ended up coming home early and I convinced him to go hiking with me, so in the end I got to do both. We went and explored Pacific Spirit Regional Park, which is super accessible from downtown and beautiful to boot. All in all we had a really lovely day!