So Many Pickles!!

Wow so our garden has taken off!  We have had so many squash, zucchini and cucumbers!   I have given some away I have frozen and processed some and I still have some!  I am pretty sure we are going to be feeding squash to our animals to get rid of in the winter!  We have had fresh squash or zucchini for dinner like almost every night!  I am thankful so what we have and that I have had an abundance of veggies!

Just last week alone I shredded and frozen 24 cups of zucchini, chopped and blanched 60 cups of zucchini and made squash "chips" that i froze of about 30 more cups....  all together 114 cups of frozen squash....  I will be giving some away so everyone come visit!   I still have about 10 yellow squash to cut up and freeze and I have stuffed 12 and frozen them for dinners..... it feels awesome!   So cutting and blanching and freezing pretty simple you can do it with most vegetables but what in the world do you do with the ones you can't!  My problem a ton of cucumbers I can't give away fast enough!  So I decided to make pickles!  I love pickles, Josh will not eat them he doesn't like vinegar so everyone plan to get pickles for Christmas this year as well!!!  So far I only have actually canned 12 pints of pickles, the problem is yesterday I picked 12 more cucumbers and I still have some sliced to can...................  need lots of jars!!!!!!!!!!  Did I mention my tomatoes haven't started yet...........  my life will soon be consumed!

So canning is a very very new thing to me I have never done it alone before in my life and have always heard horror stories, I am sure we all have...  I did a lot of research and of our course had to buy the materials to get started.  The overall process was actually pretty simple you just follow the recipe you want to use!  I have made two different kinds of pickles Sweet and Garlic Dill Pickles!  Both smelled yummy!  I have to wait a week before I try them but I am sure they will be good!!

Here is the link to the Garlic Dill Pickles: Blue Ribbon Pickles

Here is the link to the Sweet Pickles: Sweet Pickles

I made the first batch of Garlic Dill Pickles and I followed the recipe every step.   The reason I choose this recipe is because is gives you step by step details and I also loved that it told me everything to get ready before I started slicing and dicing pickles and making the brine!  The whole process took just a couple of hours so don't think they can be done very quickly!  Here is the final Dill Pickles!

Overall I think my first pickling experience was a success!  Nothing was broken and all 33 of my jars sealed the way they were supposed to!  My next big adventure pickling the beets out of the garden!!!

Thank for reading!  Look out for more fun and yummy ideas from our house to yours!!!