Dill Pickles

The other evening I was sitting in my kitchen.  I was thinking about how quickly I'm starting to get sick of pickles.  Then something happened to my laptop, and all of a sudden I somehow discovered that this thing has a web cam!

Contemplating life and pickles.

Even that couldn't excite me.

See, Hubs and our friend Justin decided to do a shared garden this year.  It's over at his house, but it's pretty massive.  They started everything from seed, including (but not limited to) beets, radishes, cucumbers, corn, squash, jalapenos, cucumbers, okra, 4 kinds of tomatoes, blue lake beans, cucumbers, sweet peas, and cucumbers.

Everything AND the kitchen sink!

In retrospect I don't know what the hell any of us were thinking planting that many cucumbers.  I was getting a grocery bag full just about every week.  And that was only half of the total, as we split everything down the middle.  Of course, on a positive note, it did certainly give me lots of practice in canning.  I only started a month or two ago.

So far I've made bread and butter pickles, sweet relish, sriracha pickles, sweet heat pickles, hot relish, and now dill pickles.  I'm not even that crazy about pickles!!

Anyway, Dill pickles were the furthest down the priority list.  I'd rather have sweet ones or relish any day of the week, but I figured hell, we should go ahead and have the variety.  Hubs found me a wonderfully resourceful list of traditional Amish canning recipes that I worked off of.  Unfortunately I didn't have any pickling spice, though, and since I'm kind of lazy (some might say 'thrifty'), I just decided to use what I have.  This is what I jammed in there.

Per quart jar:

-1 garlic clove

-1 dill sprig

-1 allspice berry

-1 tsp mixed peppercorns

-1/4 tsp celery seeds

They were delish!  I highly recommend this recipe.  Nom nom!  (I'm still sick of pickles, though.)

Ain't they purdy?