Pickles

Here is one day's worth of cucumbers from The Garden. It is about 4 pounds of mixed variety and sizes. I used the Spicy Crock pickle recipe from "Joy of Pickling" by Linda Zeidrich. It will be almost a month before the pickles are ready to eat, but if they are as good as she says they are, I'm willing to wait.

In two days, when more cukes have ripened, I am going to attempt my favorite pickle of all times. Half sour dills. I dream of pickles from the Lower East Side from barrels and from vendors whose families have made pickles for generations. They don't travel well, spilling brine onto my kind friends' luggages. This is my small attempt to get a piece of NYC back into my kitchen.

Also, I found a neglected and enormous cucumber hiding under the leaves. We ate it with dinner and it was good.

Shallots!

I clumsily planted shallots this spring. Chucked the whole head in, as opposed to separating the heads into cloves and planting the individual shallots. They grew anyway despite drought and poor planting, and look at the bounty of onion-y goodness! When they were yanked out of the ground, each head was surrounded by earthworms and sometimes even had a slug hiding at the base of the greens. Maybe with all the hot and dry, the plants kept the soil around them damp and pleasant for the critters?

I may be a real kitchen nerd and braid them into ropes and hang in the kitchen. Or maybe pickle some of them for eating with Thanksgiving turkey! Or maybe roast them and freeze for soups. What would you do with six pounds of shallots?

off to grandmother's house

Beets, cukes, pattypan squash, carrots, zucchini with the blossoms still on and baby leeks. Baby leeks may be one of the most wonderful things I have ever eaten. Use them in soup, fried with potatoes or thinly sliced in salads, delicate and amazing texture.