Pickles!

We have officially canned our Sweet & Spicy Pickles and have them for sale in the restaurant. Many of you know I have a thing for pickles. Dill, sweet, sliced, whole....I like them all. This batch is a gooooood one. Plenty of heat, but enough sweet to take the edge off.

Making pickles is a lot like making soap. You have to give your total attention while making either of them. Multi-tasking muddles it up and makes you miss those important temperature windows. Come to think of it, making barbecue has this in common with soapmaking and canning. The best barbecue is made with an almost zen-like focus. Eric pretty much lives in this zen-like state. Not me. I think I gravitate to toward these three activities because each one forces me to stop, forces me to be totally present with the task at hand, which is the opposite of my usual. Multi-tasking would be a far better middle name for me than the one my parents made up. Don't ask. I've gotten over the middle name.

Take the other day for instance. A friend took my daughter for an hour and a half. During that precious gift of time, I hired someone, printed 30 pages of labels for a mailer, ran to the restaurant and checked in (and because I'd left the label stock there), made arrangements to close on our house (by the way, we're moving, like, next week, you know, because Thanksgiving week is an awesome time for us to move), ate half a bag of popcorn, fired off two e-mails to catering clients, and did a load of laundry.

The fact that I ran back to her house, on the phone, and left the car running for 30 minutes with my purse in the front seat, wide open, before my friend noticed, is a sign that I need. To. Stop.

So here are pickles. They are delicious, they are spicy-sweet...and they are my therapy.

You Can Pickle That...Oh Portlandia, how I love thee.

I'm about to start chopping a case of pickles, because we are down to our last little bit of the huge batch I made last month. To procrastinate for a moment, I leave you with this bit from Portlandia. I love this show. I live inside this show. Seattle may not be Portland, but we are definitely kin.

Pickles!

I've been experimenting with pickles for the restaurant. We serve them on the small plates and with sandwiches. This new batch is very garlicky and spicy. I think in a good way. It's too early to tell. I've made a large batch of refrigerator pickles - hopefully a one month supply - and will can some of the batch tomorrow.

Canning is pretty new to me. I'm brining the cucumbers first overnight in pickling salt and ice (which will melt slowly and become the brine). This is a step I've never done before but word on the pickling street is that it keeps them crisper.

Anyone found this to be true? Any amazing pickle tips you want to share?

Pickling feels a lot like soapmaking to me. It's a similar rhythm. One I'm drawn to. It's basically the opposite rhythm of the firestorm of the line, which is my husband's realm. Hmmm. He's a fire sign. I'm a water sign.

So, if any of you are pickle people, please give me a holler!