In a pickle!

All Summer I have been wanting to make pickles with some of the cucumbers out of our garden.  I never seemed to get around do it, but this week I noticed we had a ton of them in our crisper drawer that were going to go bad soon. So I made my first attempt at pickles!  It was way easier than I had expected!  Kinda wish I had done this back when I had bags and bags of cucumbers instead of now when my vine is just about done producing..

For this batch, I decided to do Bread and Butter pickles because they're my favorite!

Preparing the jars..

Quick wash in warm, soapy water!

Then, right before I was ready to can, I submerged the jars into some simmering water to warm them up.

Now to prepare some cucumbers!

First, I gave the cucumbers a really good cleaning!

Don't hate.  I know my cucumbers are shaped crazy.  But they taste really yummy!

Then, I sliced them all up and put them into a large bowl.

I also kept a little "reject" bowl for all of the ones that I accidentally cut too thin (like the ones on the bottom left) and I ate those later with some dressing ;)

       Once you're done chopping, you can start making the brine? broth? pickle juice!?

I cheated on this part....

In the pot, I added 5 cups of vinegar

5 cups of sugar..made it look like this..

and here's where I cheated.  I had several pickle recipes I've collected to try...but this time I was being lazy...so I dumped in a package of pre-made Bread and Butter seasoning.  Yes, I realize that this stuff is simple to put together....the keyword in the sentence before this was lazy.  I only had a short amount of time to make pickles and do my other house chorus while the kids were sleeping.  Convenient= Good!

So for this, I used the Ball Bread and Butter Seasoning

                .

Once it came to a boil, I poured it over the cucumber slices and let them cool to room temperature.

Then, using a ladle, I packed the jars full of pickles.  Then I ladled in the extra liquid leaving a half inch of space at the top.  It was basically right about the metal cap on these jars.  

Then back into the boiling water for 15 minutes.  

Then out to cool! I tried a couple out of the bowl and the seasoning was really yummy.  We'll let these sit now for a good 4 weeks before we try them.  I got 5 jars out of this batch which I was pretty pleased with since I just used left over cucumbers!