Pickles!

Well, I wasn't planning to do this today, but I found we had some time on our hands so we drove to the farmstand where they sell the B-grade cucumbers and peaches.  I bought a half-bushel of odd-sized pickling cucumbers (the freestone peaches will be ready next month, they say) and got home and started to work.

I usually make Kosher-style dill spears, from the recipe in The American Family Cookbook.  This time I made the same recipe but in slices.  I still have 8 quarts of spears from last year, after all.  The recipe calls for cider vinegar, water, salt, garlic, dill seed, and peppercorns.  It's quite easy.  The garlic was from the farm share so was fresh and pungent.  Mmm!  I ended up with 5 quarts of the Kosher slices and one quart has already gone to my parents.

In addition I tackled the green and wax beans from the farm share, with 4 peppers from my garden, one farm share onion and one regular, store-bought, one, some celery and some edamame.  I couldn't find fresh lima or fava beans so I thought I'd try the edamame instead.  The 3-bean salad isn't that colorful because the peppers were green, not red, but it's a great recipe (Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving) and I don't really care what it looks like!  This is also the first time in a while that I didn't add beets.  Haven't gotten any from the share yet.  I made 7 pints and for that I had to add an extra half-recipe of the liquid to fill all the jars.

Now I can get to work on dinner!