pickled tink!

I’m too excited about my weekend pickling expedition to worry that my heading sounds slightly pervy!

You read that right. I finally gave pickling a shot. And to be perfectly honest, I’ve got high hopes for the outcome. I say this, of course, because while my pickles and okra look amazing, I have to wait a few days to try the pickles and two weeks to try the okra!

I used this recipe for bread and butter pickles, a longtime favorite of mine because my grandmother had a bowl of them out at every meal when I was a kid. The spicy pickled okra recipe came from here.

My only regrets, in retrospect, are not packing the pickles and okra tightly enough into the jars. As it was my first try, I only wanted to make one jar of each, but when buying the cucumbers and okra, I was unsure how much would fill a jar. Now I know. You see in the photo above that there ended up being plenty of extra room for more goods.

If you’re interested in making your own, I followed the Mommy’s Kitchen and About.com recipes pretty closely, so I won’t repost them here. But I was able to take a few photos of the process that I thought I’d share.

I started by sterilizing my jars. Because my kitchen is so small, I don’t have room for a bigger saucepan than this little one. So yeah…I sterilized those puppies one at a time.