This year's first batch of pickled cucumbers just went in to soak overnight in pickling lime water.
Experts recommend against using pickling lime in home-canned pickles. The reason for this is that canned pickles need to maintain a certain acidity in order to prevent botulism. Lime lowers acidity, and if any lime remains on the cucumbers as they go into the jars, botulism could develop.
I wash the cucumbers very thoroughly when they come out of the pickling lime solution. Wash, and wash, and wash, and I'm not talking about lifting them out of one bath and dropping them into clean water, repeatedly; I'm talking about washing them under running water (repeatedly), and then dropping them into clean water, and if a film develops on the clean water, wash them some more.
We have a good many jars of pickles - sweet and dill - left from last year, so today I am trying the "red hots" (cinnamon pickles) recipe that people used to make when I was a kid. After these pickles finish soaking in lime water (24 hours), I'll rinse them well and soak them in ice water for a few hours. I'll rinse them again (probably several times) before cooking them in the syrup. There were a few hot peppers - cayenne and jalapeno - in the picking bucket, so I threw them in the lime water, too. Might tuck them in the jars with the pickles.
The recipe calls for red food coloring, which I think I will skip, since the red hots candy ought to tint them.
This makes close to 20 pounds of cucumbers that we have picked in a week's time.
We planted W-A-Y too many cucumbers.
P.S. - That stuff behind the cucumbers that looks like meat is actually the little chunk of Nanny's birthday cake that she made us keep. We want to eat it, but are trying to stay away from sugary things.
I suppose pickles also count as "sugary things," don't they? ;)
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