Pickles!

That's right. Pickles! With an exclamation, thank you. I'm a little bit of a pickle snob. I don't love pickles. I like one kind. Claussens. I don't know why -- something about the 1) crunch 2) garlic and 3) salt. The 3 components most other pickles are missing. I don't like it when they can be bent in half. I don't like them spicy, sweet or sour. I want salt and I was garlic and darn it, I want it to coat my mouth and leave me KNOWING I had a pickle. So, when I made the very wise decision (I so wish there was a way to get sarcasm across in, say a font...) to buy a 35lb box of pickling cucumbers the week before we left for vacation, I realized I a) didn't have time to can and b) don't really like pickles. So, off to Google. After viewing many, many recipes claiming to copy the taste and snap I require, I rejected them all (seriously, how dumb do they think people are? Just look at the ingredients floating in the bottom of the jar people! Do you SEE allspice?). I finally found one that I thought looked close, read the comments and saw a few people said these were way salty and thought, "Yep. That sounds close." I then "fixed" it after looking at the bottom of jars in Walmart (Yes, I went to pickle section and looked at the bottoms of jars, even swirled a few around to make sure I wasn't missing anything...) and started pickling. Now, the downside of this recipe is when I play with things I tend to forget what and how much of what I've put in...so this is "close". I also don't know how many cucumbers I used. Maybe 20ish lbs? I made some whole, some half, some spears, some sliced...I was getting bored so every time I felt like it I changed pickle formats. We've already polished off a huge container. Now, I used the big tall tupperware containers, but any large container will do -- I've even read that lots of people use ice cream buckets! I'm thinking the recipe said this will do about a gallon of pickles -- I tripled it or more...for however many I made...

Pickles

1/3 c dried minced onions

7 cloves minced garlic (I cheated and bought pre-minced garlic and used the equivalent)

1/2 T mustard seed

2 T dried dill

2 T dill seed

2 c vinegar

1/2 c canning salt
1 1/2 quarts water (preferably distilled)

Boil and pour over cucumbers. Let cool, then put on lids and let set for 12-24 hours. Refrigerate for up to one year.

Note: Since making these we have made numerous other things with this brine...eggs (pour over peeled, hardboiled eggs), asparagus, peppers, etc.  We've even tried reusing the brine (bring back to a boil) with good results.  :-)