Friday, July 10, 2009

Aunt Bee's Pickles

Any Andy Griffith fans out there?? Oh man...that is one of my favorite episodes...Aunt Bee's pickles. Where she makes all those homemade pickles, and they taste terrible and Andy and Barney lie and say they like them and are stuck eating jar after jar of them because they don't want to hurt her feelings!

Well the other day my friend Malinda brought me over loads of cucumbers (the small pickling kind) and I love cucumbers, but didn't know what in the world I was going to do with them all. I also LOVE pickles (DILL that is...bread and butter, and sweet and sour lovers are NOT welcome here, lol). My mom was over and said we could whip them into a batch of pickles. I have never done this before, but she said she had a cheat method that worked really well for her.

For years she had struggled trying to figure out a recipe that tasted good. Mixing vinegar and spices, and then to have it turn out gross. Store bought was just easier. But then!!!! She found the answer!

She just used the juice from her jar pickles and they always tasted right! Since I shop at Sams and Costco, I have a SUPERSIZE jar filled with unused juice!

Step 1. Clean cucumber. cut off ends and pricklys. cut into pickle size slices
Step 2. Boil sliced cucumbers in pot in pickle juice for 15 minutes. (we measure our slices and juice in our saver jar to know how much)

Step 3. Pour in Jars and let set on counters until bedtime till cooled~then refrigerate for 2 days to let juices soak in.
I can't tell you how easy this was and virtually free! I already had the jars...the pickle juice would have been thrown out~and the cucumbers were from the garden!
I am feeling all Mayberryish!