I completely understand. I mean, I couldn't hold onto okra for two years, I can barely keep it around for two weeks. But I understand how sometimes you gotta throw stuff away.
Meanwhile, I'm preparing for a fall/winter in which I will have an unusually heavy workload, and so my cooking theory is ultra simple steaks-burgers-chops, beans on the side, plus basic-lettuce-salad. All amped up by pickles. So, small-batch pickle-palooza this weekend:
L-to-r, back:
- fermenting green beans (likely jacked due to accidental use of kinda-hot brine, which apparently kills the bacteria needed for fermentation; also due to my perhaps-misguided unwillingness to use as much brine as the recipe prescribed (a GALLON for two pounds of green beans?); and finally due to my concession to the recipe's call for a huge amount of dill seed. I'm ok with fresh dill fronds, but dill seed is . . . well, I haven't really known it to make stuff good, I don't know what I was thinking, this could be way bad)
- the pickled eggplant from upthread (honestly, it wasn't as amazing at the outset as I expected, in fact it was rather bland; we shall see how it goes over a few days)
- pickled mushrooms
- onions steeping in seasoned vinegar (the point here is not the onions, it's the vinegar)
Front:
- Fermenting garlic paste, which is seasoned with cumin, pepper, and lemon.
- Fermenting lipstick peppers.
- Two different jars of the same vinegar-pickled jalapenos with horseradish. (I enjoy peppers in just about everything, pickled or unpickled).
It's been two hundred degrees in here, which apparently is about as functional for pickles as it is for rising bread. But I thought I'd try to take advantage of the cool-ish week we're having to get the party started.
