Quick Bread-and-Butter Pickles

1 white onion
2 lbs. pickling cucumbers
a few spoonfuls of salt
2 cups unpasteurized apple cider vinegar
2 cups cane sugar
1/2 cup water
2 T pickling spices

Chop onion and cucumbers into 1/4" slices. Place in a large bowl and sprinkle liberally with salt. Cover with ice water, stir to blend, and leave covered in a refrigerator for 3 hours or so.

Remove from fridge and drain well while bringing remaining ingredients to a boil in a non-reactive pot. Add about enough of your vegetables to keep them more or less submerged in your pickling liquid and turn the heat down. Simmer for about five minutes, stirring occasionally. You'll know they're done when they...for back of a better description, start to look like pickles. Using a slotted spoon, remove your (now) pickles and add more cucumbers and onions. You should only need to do this twice, but you can take as many turns as you need to finish up the batch.

Once all your pickles are in jars, divide up the remaining liquid. All the pickles need to be covered by liquid, so top off with extra water, or make more vinegar and sugar mix for a stronger flavor. Seal your jars and keep them refrigerated; they should last a few weeks, but I never have mine around for that long.

NOTE: This recipe is NOT true canning. Please do not leave these pickles in a pantry, or in the fridge for long periods of time. I am a pickle junkie and don't even bother storing them properly, they do just fine for a week or two. This recipe can be canned, but please follow instructions you find elsewhere. How about Ball's website, makers of many canning and preserving products?

The delicious finished product.

Pickled Beets

To start off this blog (and so that I have something in it to play with layouts while my next recipe boils away on the stove), here's a recipe I posted previously on the Wood Street Blog, my previous collaborative craftiness effort. Enjoy!

Delicious Pickled Beets!
(recipe taken from Sept. 2010 Food and Wine Magazine)

1 cup cider vinegar plus 1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 small red onion, finely sliced
1 garlic cloves, quartered
1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
2 bay leaves
2 whole cloves
1 1/2 tsp. black peppercorns
2 tsp. dried thyme
1 tsp. dried oregano
2 pounds medium red beets, peeled and cut into 2-by-1/2-inch sticks

(I used a sprig of fresh oregano in place of both the oregano and thyme.)

Bring all ingredients but beets to a boil. Simultaneously, boil the beets for about 10 minutes, until tender. Drain and return to the cooking pot. Pour hot pickling liquid over the beets and let stand at room temperature for 4 hours. Drain and serve!



Delicioso!