Too much of a good thing!

 Cucumbers are abounding in my garden.
Cucumber salad every day isn't making a dent in the harvest.
Everyone I know has too many, so there is no one to give them to.




Enter the  August issue of Real Simple magazine and a recipe for refrigerator pickles! See the recipe here:
Real Simple Almost Hands-Free Dill Pickles

 The article said that the hands on time was 5 minutes.
It took about a half hour.

First I cut my cucumbers into quarters and, because I didn't use pickling cucumbers, I had to cut some of them smaller to fit into the jars.
Since these are not being sealed, I used two old glass canning jars.

I mixed white vinegar, onion slices, garlic, sugar, dill seed (from the garden), peppercorns, bay leaf, salt and hot water and stirred to dissolve the sugar.

 I poured this mixture over the cucumbers. I spilled a lot of it so some of my cucumbers were out of the liquid.
Note to self: get a canning jar funnel.
I put new lids on them. I have the old zinc lids. I wasn't comfortable using them.

The jars of pickles sit in the refrigerator for one day, and then you can eat them! They will keep for a week.

What I learned:
The parts of my cucumbers that weren't in the liquid didn't pickle, so in the future, I would make sure they were all smaller.
I think I over packed the jars.
I used really large garlic cloves. The pickles were really garlicky. Not that that is a bad thing.
Too much of a good thing turned into yummy pickles!