Okra - July 8, 2020

Important things first:  Nanny's surgery went fine.  She's probably going to come home this evening.

Now,

I got up early yesterday morning and started slicing cucumbers for pickles.  After seeing how many I had (my big mixing bowl was full), I decided I needed more - if you're going to go through the canning process, you might as well make it worth the effort - and there were more, at least again as many as I'd already sliced. 

The squash needed picking again, and so did the peppers.  While picking the peppers, I noticed that the okra was bearing, but I hadn't brought a knife to cut it, so I left the garden without it, intending to go back in the evening to get it. 

Came home, sliced the newly-picked cucumbers, and put them in lime water to soak.  The directions said to soak them 12 hours or overnight.  According to my (incorrect) way of thinking, the cucumbers would be ready to go in the jars about 8 p.m. last night.

Wrong.

It's been so long since I've made pickles that I'd forgotten what all has to happen.

First, the 12-hour soak in lime.  Then a 3-hour soak in ice water.  After the ice-water bath, the pickles go into the brine for another 5 hours (or overnight), and then, finally, they can be cooked and put into the jars. 

Hoping to get the canning done by bedtime, I "fudged" on the 12-hour lime soak and let them soak only 8 hours before putting them in the ice-water bath.  But I forgot about the 5-hour brine soak.  At 7:30 last night, I re-read the directions and realized that the pickles weren't going to make it into the jars that day unless I wanted to stay up until the wee hours of the morning.  Uh, no.  So, I'll be canning pickles this morning.

The recipe I'm using is on the back of the lime bag.  It's a sweet pickle recipe, but I'm going to make them spicy by adding hot peppers.  Sliced jalapenos and cayenne peppers have been soaking in the brine with the cucumbers.  Before I seal the jars, I'm going to add some hot pepper flakes.  That ought to fire them up nicely.

While the cucumbers were soaking in lime, I made 6 pints of jalapeno pepper jelly.  I did not have any rubber gloves - they're hard to come by these days - so I tried an experiment to keep the peppers from burning my hands.  Remembering that capsaicin sticks to oil, I smeared a few drops of olive oil on my hands.  After slicing the peppers, I washed my hands with soap.  It worked!  No burning!

It's time to get after those pickles.