Historical Project: Pickling Vegetables

Dusty D loves food--salty, savory food. And we have a "hundred- year- rule" in the house--we don't eat anything that wasn't eaten a hundred years ago. Why do we have this silly rule?

One reason is economy. Dusty D loves to cook and likes to think I can save lots of money by cooking everything from scratch.

Two is for health reasons. Neither of us feel as good when eating anything processed, even a store-bought cookie, much less a TV dinner (that's out, violates 100-year rule) or cereal (at $4 a pound, or, meat prices, I'll have a nice steak for breakfast instead of a sad little bowl of flakes, thankee) or whatever.

Bratwurst is processed--but they sure were eating sausage 100 years ago. That's in! Beer? Good heavens, the Egyptians made it. In! Whole chicken? Yep, I can make that baby stretch throughout an entire week, including lunches. Chicken nuggets? Nope. And so on. But we're not total sticklers--we do buy sugar for instance. Michigan Made Beet Sugar, I hasten to add. But I do make all our bread and the yoghurt we have every day for breakfast.

OK, all that said, while filing the other day I found a neat handout that local apiatrix Lisa Bashert had given me on how to pickle veggies. My mouth started watering, remembering the Tony Packo pickled vegetables I'd eaten as a child growing up near Toledo. And he made it sound so easy--and I had lots of dill growing in the garden! My sweetie got so interested he made a special trip for garlic and then I was off to the races.

I cleaned and chopped garlic (6 bulbs), carrots (6), a head of cauliflower, a handful of radishes, a big white onion, and grabbed a handful of dill from the garden. Here's the first layer in the crock pit crock.

Here's the crock filled with beautiful vegetables, layered with dill. I had to gently shake the crock to help the vegetables settle into a tightly- packed mass. Sprinkled a pinch of chili seeds on top.

The brine is 3/4 unit of salt per 10 units of water, so I added 3/4 cup of salt to a pitcher and added 10 cups of water.

The recipe also includes 1/4 cup of vinegar per gallon, so in went 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, plus a sploosh--the crock volume is a bit over a gallon.

I filled the crock almost up to the top and got my cleaned plate. I positioned the plate right on top of the veggies and weighed it with a washed gallon jar fulled with water. Added the last bit of brine to bring it right up to the lip of the crock, making sure every vegetable is perfectly covered.
Covered the whole thing loosely with a plastic bag to keep dust out and there we go. It should be ready in 2 weeks...but we're already planning to start another crock next week. We'll see how it goes--it could be a complete disaster, or a source of wonderful healthy snacks, side dishes, and lunch tidbits.

So the only thing to remember is:

3/4 units salt per 10 units water for general brine, plus 1/4 cup vinegar per gallon of veggies.

Below are scans of the original flier if you'd like to try this too. Wish me luck!