Bookworm Breaks Hearts

Guys, I have been avoiding this post for a while but I know it must happen.

The pickles were a failure.  This is hard to write, and clearly my most emotional post to date.  Here are the reasons the pickles are a failure.

Cute Cukes Betray Bookworm.

1. Taste – You can eat one of these pickles.  However, it will be tough to finish.  And you will make an um, expressive, face as you swallow it.  There may be some moments in the chewing process where you think “ok, I can do this” and then immediately you think about how vinegar is also used to clean floors. 

I blame this squarely on the recipe, which didn’t allow enough vinegar to cover the cukes, so I added more.  Perhaps I should have added more of the other ingredients as well, but I needed guidance from the cookbook since that is why you buy them.  This was a major strike against following a recipe in a book versus a recipe online with community feedback and handy-dandy performance stars.

2. Texture – I like my pickles crispy.  Super crispy.  These were soft and there are a few possible reasons for this.  It could be that we couldn’t find Pickling Cucumbers and went with two other kinds, one of which I chose based on cuteness. It could be that we didn’t read the “read this section first before you start anything” section, which included a section on “firming agents.”

Mama Bookworm was really counting on these pickles, and is now really struggling to come up with ideas for Christmas gifts.  I just assumed that this small-batch-local-pickle-venture would be on the wish list of everyone I know.  Perhaps next time I try a new recipe I won’t do it with 12 pounds of vegetables.

Slider Memories Lead to Meandering Mention of a Book

Loyal Readers have noted my well-documented love of pickles.  I love them and always have.  Fun fact: a local bar – inexplicably now out of business – had the best pickles in the city on their delicious sliders (available in chicken, beef, BBQ and fish).  Loyal Reader Katherine once secured me a tub of pickles from this bar that was so big I could not physically lift it.  I ate a truly disgusting amount of these pickles, and was never happier.

A convenient photo of a barefoot and pregnant
woman pickling and achieving multiple cliches.

Fast-forward to Labor Day weekend 2012 and the topic of this rambling book blog.  Andrew and I tried our first recipe from The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. 

Romantic soul that I am, I got Andrew a complete pickling kit – including recipe book – for our anniversary.  What better activity to enjoy together than to make my favorite snack?  In all honesty, Andrew started the whole pickling idea.  Eating pickles is one of the main things we have in common.

It was a fun experience, but the recipe book was wrong about the amount of vinegar mixture we needed by 50%.  And when you are working with 12 pounds of cucumbers, that is a lot.  C’mon, Linda!

Now we are in the midst of the hardest part – waiting a month to try our pickled creations.  We are both worried that the cukes won’t stay crispy enough.  And honestly, it is a lot of pressure for this experiment to measure up.  We have talked about our pickles a lot.  It’s a big topic over dinner at our house. Well, that and the fact that the Pirates are totally falling apart (string of swear words here).

A pickling montage, featuring
the guns of pickle-picker-upper extraordinaire Andrew.