The Modern Victory Garden

Between the harvest of cucumbers on Sunday and accumulated harvests from earlier in the week, I had a total of just over four pounds of cucumbers available on Monday.    Our favorite dill pickle relish recipe (Ball Blue Book of Preserving) calls for 8 pounds of cucumbers.                

Dill Relish

• 8 pounds of pickling cucumbers
• ½ cup canning salt
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 1 quart water
• 1 pound onions
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons dill seed
• 1 quart vinegar

Wash cucumbers; drain. Finely chop cucumbers. Placed chopped cucumbers in a bowl and sprinkle with salt and turmeric. Pour water over cucumbers; let stand 2 hours. Peel and finely chop onions. Drain cucumbers. Rinse under cold water; drain. Combine cucumbers, onions, sugar, dill seed, and vinegar in a large saucepot; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Ladle hot relish into hot pint jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.      

The recipe has always yielded a full 8 pints of finished product for me.   Since I only had four pounds of cucumbers, I was expecting to make a half batch.     With that in mind, I got started with the chopping of the cucumbers.          

I have used a food processor to make this recipe but find that using a good quality (sharp!) knife produces a nicer sized cucumber piece for this relish.   What surprised me is that when I had finished chopping the cucumbers, I had almost as much as I have had historically in that same bowl – using 8 pounds of pickling cukes!   Look at the amount of finished chopped cukes in this next picture…                        

And then compare it to this picture from 2008 when I made the full recipe.   The 2008 picture has the salt and turmeric already sprinkled on it but you get a good idea of how much was in that bowl.   It was obvious to me at this point that I was going to get more than a half batch out of this recipe despite only using half the amount of cukes.   In fact, I got 6 pints which is ¾ the usual amount from only half the input!    These were truly mysteriously abundant cukes.                         

I had enough ripe tomatoes accumulated to do four pints of sauce while I was at it - since I had the canner going and the kitchen messed up.                

Life provides an occasional mystery and these amazingly abundant cukes definitely have me happily puzzled!                         

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener