Cucumbers Galore

They just started appearing in the break-room. Shopping bags of cukes. I would take a couple, not wanting to appear greedy, but then the next day when I would peer into the bag, none were gone. After several days, I just took the bag on my way out.

I had the first batch thin-sliced and in a brine for a couple of days. Thank heaven for that additional fridge in the outside pantry. (OK, so we have a small pantry in the kitchen, four cupboards in the laundry room, a full closet with all those crazy appliances you collect over the years and the "big" pantry, which is a strange narrow room that someone added to the house who-knows-when. It has the fridge, a chest freezer, and loads of shelving for all the goodies we "put-up" and buy.) I honestly expected son (G) to finish them. He said he wanted to, but somehow didn't. And when I get home from work at 10pm or later, I just am not up to it. But this week my boss was on vacation and I worked the morning shift. I came home, read the Sunday paper, had a cup of herb tea and then finished the pickles, Bread and Butter pickles.

I wandered around the net looking for an interesting recipe. Honestly, I do not believe you can mess up B&B pickles. But I needed some idea of ratio of suger, vinegar etc to the number of cukes I had. I found

http://blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com/search?q=pickles

I like the way Drew Kime writes, I decided to use his recipe. It seems as if Drew cooks a bit like it do; make the best of what you have, and live with your mistakes. I like that.

Check out his site. Some very cool stuff there.

Now all this talk about pickles started me thinking about my Grandmother. I guess I am old enough that we always called her Grandma, none of those crazy names I hear, or like Nana (husbands Mother) or MeMa (my Mother). She was the consummate cook. She left her native Hungary when she was 16. She went to New York City by ship, where she worked as a cook for a Jewish Rabbi. It wasn't until I was much older that I learned from my friend Brenda that much of what I had learned at my Grandmother's apron were Jewish dietary techniques. And we nor she are Jewish. Isn't life weird?

Grandma always made pickles. Always. I do not think I ever saw a store-bought pickle in her home. And she never used vinegar. Always a piece of rye bread under a plate, under a brick all covering the huge crock (which is sitting in my living room right now) which was full of the cucumbers she had grown in her garden. And those pickles! Oh my, they were great! Salty, crisp, covered in dill and always pickled whole. They were great! Did I say that twice?

I laughed out loud when Drew talked about measuring over the pot and putting in a bit too much Turmeric. Every morning, or nearly every morning, I make what my husband refers to as "sludge" for the two of us. We are both having stomach issues, he far more than I, and after he used one of the OTC acid things that had a list of side-effects as long as your leg, we started using some more holistic approaches to the issue. The sludge is a mix of turmeric (we are up to a coffee scoop worth), ground flax seed, Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar, Kombucha (I make my own, maybe I'll write about that someday), a small amount of juice, sometimes some protein powder and various other things. At first drinking turmeric was an eye-opening experience. It is not so much hot as it is bitter. But I will say this, when I have this in the morning I have no issues with my gut, period. And Michael has decreased his problems immensely. So regardless of the taste, we do it.

Back to the cucumbers. Today the bag had even more, and I noticed some zucchini too! Sneaky little devils. I like zukes. I love them raw actually. But I will be curious if the next bag has more zukes than cucumbers!

So we are contemplating getting some fresh Dill tomorrow and making some Grandma pickles.

I am sad because we did not get a garden in this year. Just too many problems, and Michael's health made in impossible for him to garden. And I just did not have time. Or energy. So I am extremely grateful to the mystery gardener who so graciously left bags of cukes in the break-room for the pickin'.