Bread & Butter Pickles

We planted ten cucumber seeds in one of our beds this year, then thinned them down to six plants. Never in my life have I seen cucumbers this productive. We harvested hundreds of pickling cukes from early July until the end of August.

The whole reason we planted them was so that I could make bread and butter pickles from a recipe I got back in the 1990’s from a co-worker named Sheila. I had tried her pickles, and they were amazing. She shared her recipe and the improvements she had made to it. I had made pickles from Sheila’s recipe a few times over the years and they always turned out great.

Jimmy and I teamed up to make bread and butter pickles this summer. He sliced the cukes on the mandolin, I cut the other veggies and took it from there. Each batch took the better part of the day because you have to let the cukes and veggies “weep” under ice chips for several hours. It’s worth it, though.

The pickles are sweet, a little tangy and nicely crisp. My brother Andy loves them. My stepdaughter Jaymie says they are the perfect accompaniment to the goose liver pate she makes. Our friend Charlie in Virginia gave up trying to find good bread and butter pickles and was very happy when he tried ours.

This summer I dug around the internet to see if I could locate Sheila and see if we could reconnect. I found out that she’s gone now. It made me sad, but somehow it feels really good to honor her with the goodness she shared with me all those years ago.

Ingredients: Fresh cucumbers, fresh onions, fresh green and red peppers, fresh garlic, pickling salt, sugar, apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, turmeric, celery seed, mustard seed