I’ve only gotten 3 quilt squares done in the past week or so. One for the Moda Blockheads 4 which I am using reds and yellows and grays to make. The other 2 are for the block of the month from A Quilting Life which I am doing out of my blues bins.
Everything else going on here involves our garden output and then an impulse buy from our semi local garden market. We have been enjoying the pickles and relishes from our home grown cucumbers so much that I impulsively bought a half bushel of pickling cucumbers on Monday. I seriously underestimated the amount that would be in that half bushel. I also didn’t account for in my planning all the different sized cucumbers that would be in it. So after cleaning them all, I sorted into sizes... small for whole dill pickles, medium for sliced sweet pickles,
large for dill pickles quartered down the length of the cucumber and extra large for sweet pickle relish. The pickle relish is currently almost finished its 2 hour soak in cold salt water. Once that is done I will drain it and cook it up in its vinegar/sugar solution and get it into jars and then water bath it. Another couple of hours should do it. It is a lot of work, but I love the satisfaction of seeing the finished jars lined up and cooling on the counter.
Rick informed me in March that he really didn't care for dill pickles (I've been making them regularly for 20 years) - he really prefers gherkins. My recipe calls for 8 cups of small cukes - so we planted 8 hills. Do you realize how quickly a cuke goes from being too small, to dill-sized? 1 day! (I might be exaggerating a bit..). Anyway, we have 10 pints of sweet dills; 2 quarts of a sweet pickle that uses tea bags; 4 pints of gherkins and 12 jars of 3 different kinds of relish - and I've donated some of the cukes to the women's shelter. Spent yesterday morning pulling out the rest of the plants!!
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