Ickle me, Pickle me, Tickle me, too

Rosie Creek Farm's constant lobbing of ginormous vegetables has not defeated me yet! Last night, I got to pickling:


I don't have a pressure cooker, so for me, canning = pickling. For one batch, I pickled the purple beans (which turned green as I blanched them) with carrots, garlic, and sweet red and green peppers. Oh, how I adore pickled garlic! I don't like dill, so I made these slightly sweet and hot, with the addition of sugar and red pepper flakes. Then I got creative and added a cinnamon stick and a shake of cloves to the brine. We shall see how it turns out! It smelled fantastic!



I also did a batch of julienned rutabaga, beets, and onions. Because the onions were a fancy-pants sweet local Alaskan hybrid, I wanted their taste to shine and put nothing else in the brine besides salt. Pickled beets with rutabaga and onions sounds like something they'd have served in a Communist bloc orphanage before the fall of the Berlin wall, doesn't it? But I look forward to trying it!

Ickle me, Pickle me, Tickle me, too,
In Soviet Russia, beets pickle you!