Pickling Pickles

Last weekend I crossed another item off my 25 While 25 list, my roommate and I visited my grandparents and made pickles! My family used to make pickles every summer with my grandparents but we hadn't done so in about 7 or 8 years. I was driving past a field when I noticed the workers were harvesting pickling cucumbers so I called my grandma up to see if I could use the recipe to make some of my own. Turns out she had been thinking of making pickles this year and invited us right over!

I'm not posting the recipe because it's a super secret family recipe for the best freaking pickles you've ever eaten. I keep trying to convince my family to either sell them at a farmer's market or enter them into a contest of some sort but alas, no one listens.

However, if you'd like to make your own pickles, there are tons of recipes out there and the process is fairly easy.  I also have these tips for you:

1. Wash the cucumbers, even if the people at the market say they're washed. We soaked and scrubbed them and discovered that the water was positively filthy when we were done. Washed my foot.
2. You will smell like vinegar when you're done. You'll also smell vinegar for the next 2 days.
3. You can make 28 jars of pickles from 200 pickling cucumbers. If you're as awesome as us, you can do this in under 4 hours from start to finish.
4. While technically you can open these up and start eating them in a few weeks, leaving them until Thanksgiving is the golden ticket to freaking fantastic pickles.
5. I don't even like pickles. At all. But I will eat several of these at a time.
6. Ok so that last one wasn't a tip, and I guess neither is this one. Ok I'm done now.