Monday, August 23rd, 2010
It’s Monday morning, the sky is grey, and it smells like autumn. A patch of leaves here and there are going from green to peach and the tall summer weeds are getting woody. I have a conference call at 11:30, the washer and dryer are full and waiting, and there are dirty dishes in the sink, but I had a great weekend, and I needed to capture it in photographs. I hung some new pictures on the walls in the house, paintings by my friend Richard Michaels, made a fabulous veal pate on Friday, and then on Saturday I made pickles with cucumbers and garlic from my garden. I grew up making pickles with my mom. But this is my first solo venture into fermenting on a grand scale: 16 jars. Now they disappear into a dark corner of the pantry for a few months. But we’ll have delicious pickles for the winter holidays. I hope.
I followed the directions assiduously with one exception. The directions said never pickle with hard water because the minerals in the water interfere with fermentation. I was supposed to use distilled water, or boil water and carefully separate out the minerals. I didn’t do that. I made pickles with my well water, which tastes fabulous, but has lots of calcium in it. Pickling vegetables has been done for thousands of years. I can’t imagine the ancients used water without the local minerals in it. So maybe we’ll have delicious pickles for the winter holidays, or maybe I spent six hours this weekend learning why it’s important to follow directions.
Tags: farming, Food, pickles, Sustainability