My friend, Kathy, loves my family. She loves everyone and her southern accent and personality allow everyone to love her right back. She went gleaning in a cucumber field a while back and told me about it. We couldn't make it out to the field so she ended up giving us a 5 gallon bucket of her leftover cucumbers. I had wonderful intentions of making pickles out of those cucumbers, but they sat in my basement for over a week because I was too afraid to try and make them. Kathy talked to me at church and told me I just needed to feed those cucumbers to the pigs and she was right. When we dumped them out they were all pretty nasty. Oops.
This morning, she called and told me a story. She was out running errands and had to use the bathroom. She missed one turn and went to the next - Jack's Fruit and Meat Market. She went to the restrooms and passed by some pickling cucumbers that were on sale, along with some dill. She bought them and asked if she could come over today to help us make pickles. What a sweet lady!
Marissa gathered wild grape leaves from our neighbor's yard, and I washed out our buckets to make sure they were ready for pickles. (I got the buckets from Kroger's bakery for free.) The kids were available to help when she showed up and I kept an eye on them as I tried to finish packing stuff up for camping. They were able to make the brine, pack the pickles and leaves and dill and garlic into two buckets. How exciting! Now I just need to make sure I get them bottled after the weekend and we will have wonderful pickles for a long time to come.
