Vengeance shall be mine.
I CHOSE a 3 gallon pickling crock for several reasons. 1) Who needs 5 gallons of any one flavor of pickle? 2) I would have to go back to scything the yard to have the necessary muscle bulk to lift a full 5 gallon pickle crock. 3) Cucumbers flat out lie.
There were enough cucumbers to fill the 3 gallon job about 2/3rds of the way. Plenty of room for the guys to be fully submerged in the briny deep. Everything proceeded swimmingly, if you will.
Canning day arrives. The brine and the pickles are separated. The brines goes on the stove to heat. The pickles come out to rest before being packed off to bedfordshire. Except I need another big bowl to put them in after filling the first. huh. I sterilize 8 pint jars, fill them and process them. I sterilize 4 more jars, thinking by eye SURELY only 3 will be called for. If in the interest of quality control and self defense I hadn't eaten about a pint of them straight out of the crock I would have needed to sterilize a 13th pint jar. Now that is simple math, and I have annotated the recipe accordingly. But I am also putting a close watch on those cucmber vines and am not above slipping the deer a 5 spot for his troubles.
Yes, Virginia, that is more than a dozen pints of pickles. 5 pints required immediate fresh packing because THEY WOULDN'T FIT IN THE 3 GALLON CROCK. What? You only see 4 additional pints? Yes dear, I'm eating the 5th pint. Be nice or you'll get pickles in your stocking.
In other news;
We, The Ulster County Handspinners Guild, rose to the invitational challenge on our competing teams' home ground and slipped away under time with the blue. Silently checking our time pieces and the bottom of our shoes the conversation began almost immediately - who weaves next time?
On the subject of jam making (can you tell I've been hitting the County Fair highlights?). How to know when it's done enough to "set". Well, that's a little secret I'm going to let just a few of you in on.
Forget about the Plate Test, take your damn spoons out of the freezer somebody is probably trying to put sugar in their ice tea.
Jam is done when it's heated up your kitchen pretty nicely for August, has had just about enough it's own self, thank you, parts of it start committing hari kari and carbonizing themselves to the top of your stove. It will then spit at you and leave a MARK. That's when it's time to start bailing that stuff out of the pot, slop some down the cabinet front and on to the floor, forcing it into jars big enough to be considered a proper size for filling a week's worth of toast.
I think Grandma called it the lava stage.