A few days ago Granny brought me these three jars of food items she canned last week. I have only opened the chili sauce. It is so good you want to just eat it straight from the jar with a spoon! The pickled beets and lemon cucumbers are still marinating for now. The main reason I have not opened up the lemon cucumber pickles is that they are just too pretty to open. I just like looking at them. I have snapped about 1000 photos of them to try to capture and preserve their beauty. I wish there was a local fair on right now so she could enter them. I am positive they would capture a first place ribbon.
I think I am going to open them on Friday. I do not even have a recipe for you, I’m sorry. I am sure it is pretty simple though. Pickling doesn’t seem to be too complex in the way of ingredients. I’m betting there is water, vinegar, lemon cucumbers, dill, garlic, and salt. I’ll ask her if there is anything else next time I see her. By the way this is the same sprightly granny who makes this splendid seasonal salsa!
Thanks again to dad and granny for all of the marvelous foodstuffs!
P.S. I really liked the “Simply Recipes” photo of the lemon cucumbers and I wanted you to see what they look like whole. So that is why I linked to that site.
OK, OK, here it is!
Granny’s Lemon Cucumber Pickles
-1/2 tsp. salt
-2 c. white vinegar
-1 c. water
-1 large whole garlic clove (cut in half to expose the flavor)
-3 sprigs fresh dill
Sprinkle salt in the bottom of your quart jar. (Note: You can use more salt if you like. Granny cut it down considerably to make the pickles more heart healthy for she and my dad). Throw in 1 clove of garlic and one sprig of dill. Fill jar ½ of the way up with washed and quartered lemon cucumbers (peeled or un-peeled, your choice). Granny did not peel hers. Top first layer of cucumbers with another sprig of dill. Fill remaining ½ of jar with cucumbers. Top with one more sprig of dill.
Meanwhile bring vinegar and water to a boil. Pour boiling vinegar and water over cucumbers leaving 1/2 inch head space at the top of the jar.
Follow the FRESH PRESERVE instructions in this Kosher Dill Pickle recipe to complete the canning process.
Well, you will simply have to post the recipe for this….I have had grandma’s pickled cucumbers, they are insanely delicious…I can only imagine how truly mindblowing the lemon cucumber version will be…please tell all of us!!!!
Absolutely prize-winning photos, Julie, and your granny’s jars are works of art. You’d better fork over the recipes or you’ll be in trouble.
Those lemon cucumbers are beautiful!! Your granny is an artist. I have a garden full of lemon cukes, and I am inspired to try to pickle them. I hope mine come out as nice as your granny’s, but that’s a tall order!
She’s been around the growing a garden block a time or two. Shes always been a mentor to me. Lemon cucumbers are so good to eat plain it’s hard to save them up for pickles! Good luck!
Julie, Hi from Colorado. Beautiful, but don’t you have to process them? Will they keep on the shelf? I processed mine and now they look a little drab. 🙁 How do you keep up a blog and get all this canning done? Thanks so much for your recipes. Must be the Idaho in you. I am from Rexburg. Hooray for Idaho.
First of all, Thank You! Secondly, this is my granny’s recipe and she swears they will keep on the shelf. We ate ours within two weeks. And, FYI, I took these pics the day after they were canned. They didn’t look as good after two weeks:( And, truth be told, my granny and Dad are the ones who do most of the work. I help out whenever I can. They are amazing (and retired)!
I’m definitely an Idaho girl though. I love all that food preservation stuff! My husband and I hunt, fish, garden, and we even have a few chickens!
Thanks for stopping by! I LOVE hearing from fellow Idahoans! Especially ones who are/were so nearby! But Colorado is awesome/beautiful too! I actually lived in Pueblo and then Colorado Springs for about a year back in 2000.
Hi, and thank you for the recipe. I too live in Idaho Falls.
The photos are beautiful, and I am going to use your recipe. I have been doing a lot of research about the processing because my parents canned for many years, (they recently passed at ages 88 and 86)
Everything I have found says our grannies got lucky if they never had problems in recent years because of changes in bacteria over the years. My dad processed all his fruit and pickles in much less time than the recipes call for. Thankfully none of ever got sick.
The dill pickle recipes say to process 15 minutes. Mine from regular pickeling cukes turned out really good. I am going to try it with the lemon cukes too, oh but I wish it wasn’t necessary to process so long. My dad put 1 or 2 grape leaves in his dills to keep them crisp. There is also pickle crisper in the canning section, and a pinch of alum will also help the crispness.
Thanks again for your recipe, and the amazing pictures.
Thank you for the comment. It’s probably safer to process longer! Granny is set in her ways!
I am glad that you enjoyed your grandmothers canned food. But the way she cans is not safe anymore based on the USDA. What she does in open kettle canning and does not kill all the bacteria in the jar. Yes it seals it but you have trapped oxygen in the jar and therefore bacteria. Maybe some more research on posting of home canned food would be safe…..i Know you have never gotten sick…but it only takes one jar and only one time to get botulism.
You’re probably correct April. I’m certainly not a canning expert! I will add a disclaimer to the post. Thank you for pointing this out to me.
You don’t need to process at all if you plan to eat them fairly quickly, just keep them in the fridge. Processing is only necessary if you actually plan to keep them around for extended periods of time, collecting dust on the shelf. Boo! I’ve got a bumper of lemon cucumbers this year, thanks for the recipe Granny! If I die from botulism I’ll let you know 🙂
Hahaha!!! Please don’t die!