PICKLE TIME

           Somehow another year has passed and I just put my last jar of Aunt Lola’s Dill Pickles in the fridge. That means it’s once again time to put up dill pickles. This is something I’ve been doing since my early twenties, so that makes about fifty years of making dill pickles.

          My Great Aunt Lola was the canning queen in my life. She canned everything from pickles to sauerkraut and actual mincemeat. Her house was on Beacon Hill and her basement was full of jars that contained everything you could possibly can. She had green beans, peaches, pears, cherries, blueberries, huckleberries…if you could can it, she did.

          The mincemeat with which most of us are familiar is the stuff that comes in a jar around the holidays. It’s mostly raisons and chopped apples. Auntie Lola made the real thing that contained actual meat. It was usually some form of venison, elk or moose because all the men back then hunted and brought home da meat. If memory serves, she made pies with her mincemeat and they were tasty.

          I loved her dill pickles as did John. Rather than just give me some…well, maybe one jar…she offered to teach me how to put up my own. The last sentence in her recipe was, “When someone compliments you on your pickles, don’t give them a jar. Offer to help them make some, otherwise you’ll run out in no time.”

          The first time I made dill pickles, I did it at her house. It was 1968 and Aunt Lola supervised each and every step through the process.  I’m still grateful for that because I’ve followed her recipe and instructions ever since. When Uncle Ike put the box of pickles in my car after we finished, she cautioned me about driving home because the jars were still warm and could potentially break. I’m proud to say I got them all home without any breakage.

          One of the things Aunt Lola liked to know, being a very frugal woman, was the cost of her canning projects. In 1968, it was thirty-three cents per quart for 18-20 quarts. In 1996, I figured out the cost and it came to ninety-nine cents per jar. This year I made twelve quarts and the cost was $4.63 per quart. That includes the cost of rings and lids plus a gallon of apple cider vinegar. I already had enough salt left over from last year and didn’t have to purchase any jars, or it would have been closer to six or seven dollars a jar.

          There was a time I put up somewhere between thirty and forty jars every August. That was because I gave them away to family, friends and coworkers at the holidays. For the most part, I believe everyone who received a jar was pleased to be a recipient because they really are the best dill pickles ever. Once I retired, I stopped making so many and cut back to twenty or less. I still gifted some friends, but also offered to teach them how to do their own the way I was taught.

          It’s been a few years, pre-covid I think, when I had three friends over. I had told them to let the cucumbers stand overnight in cold water and to scrub them clean before coming to my house. I did my cucumbers first and then supervised each woman as they did their own cucumbers. To my knowledge, only one of those friends still does her own. I gift one of the other women a jar each Christmas.

          Last year I taught Arayli and Amber how to make dill pickles. Arayli went home with five jars of her own. I texted with Amber and she is going one better…she is going to a U-Pick place and picking her own cucumbers…yay Amber. No one else in the family is interested in learning to make these fabulous treats. Perhaps once I’m gone and they discover the original recipe, someone will be eager to pick up the cucumber, so to speak. Besides teaching people how to make their own, I’ve also given the recipe away to countless folks. I don’t know how many went on to make their own pickles.

         

          A couple of things have changed over the decades I’ve been doing this. I used to peel a bulb of garlic for each and every jar. My hands would smell wonderful for days. Sometimes the skin would even peel as if I had been burned. I no longer peel garlic…my hands and wrists rebelled some years ago. Instead, I purchase the big pre-peeled bag from Costco. Since there’s so much to a bag and I don’t put up that many jars any longer, I usually try to share a bag with another pickle maker. Any that’s left over I chop, put into ice cube trays, freeze and use in recipes during the winter. 

          The other thing that has changed I actually did in the beginning. I let the cucumbers soak overnight in cold water and then scrubbed them one-by-one with a vegetable brush. When I complained about this to Aunt Lola, she asked me why I wasn’t putting them in the washing machine. Whoa, I can do that? So, for years, at least until my top-loading, not so electronic, washing machine gave up its life. I put the cucumbers in the washer, filled it with cold water, let it sit overnight and then spun the water and detritus out the following morning. The result was squeaky clean, bright green cucumbers. Now that washers are so “smart,” it’s not possible to do this, so it’s back to scrubbing with a vegetable brush…not so fun.

Great Aunt Lola’s dill pickles have once again been put up. They’ll be ready to eat in about a month and will be delicious over the coming months. At a time like this, it makes me feel very good to think Auntie Lola, wherever her spirit may reside these days, is pleased to know just how far her recipe and instructions have gone…and to know that I’m still pickling away all these years later.