Making Fermented Half-Sour Garlic Dill Pickles

There's a lot of love for pickles in this house. Tom and Adam both enjoy making and eating canned pickles all year round, and they've had fun experimenting with different flavor combinations. They make bread and butter pickles, garlic dill pickles, both sweet and sour pickle relish, you name it. Today they opened a jar (from our quickly-dwindling supply) named "Pickle #5." No, I don't know what that means. But they seemed to enjoy them.

I don't love pickles like they do, but I very much like the pickles you get out of the crock from a really good deli. Now in San Francisco or Berkeley you can find a good deli, or a good charcuterie place, on just about every block. Walnut Creek is another matter. So if I want a good deli sour pickle, I have to make them myself.

I've read all kinds of stuff online, and books (hello, Sandor Katz), about fermenting pickles. It seems as if there is a lot of room for experimentation. Basically a fermented pickle sits in a salt-water brine rather than vinegar, and of course you don't can them, but rather keep them in the fridge after you've fermented them to the specific flavor you want. Since you are not canning them at high heat, good bacteria and probiotics will develop and flourish, as in sauerkraut or kimchi. Canned pickles still have plenty of nutrition and flavor, but they don't have the good bacteria.

To the brine you can add any flavorings you like, but garlic and dill are standard. Like your pickles a little spicy? Add some red pepper flakes. Like them very crisp? Add some grape or oak leaves for the tannins. Like your pickles extra sour? Make the brine stronger (more salt). It's really up to you.

Today I picked our first cucumbers, and since I wanted to ferment them whole, I picked them small, at about four inches each. All the cucumbers were roughly the same size. I rinsed them, rubbing off the spines, and cut off both ends to help keep them crunchy (the blossom end has an enzyme that can soften your pickles). Then I put them in a quart mason jar with four smashed cloves of our garlic and some dill seed. To that I added a brine (2 tablespoons salt per quart of water), weighted it all down with a glass fermentation weight, and topped it with our FARMcurious Re-cap lids. These were a gift from my brother and sister-in-law and we use them all the time. 

These pickles will sit on the counter for 2-5 days, and then I'll switch out the lid and put them in the fridge. Keep in mind that fermentation happens faster in warm weather and slower in cool weather. Cucumber weather is generally warm weather (and it's exceedingly warm here), so I'll keep an eye on this ferment. 

And, that's it! No hot canning jars and steaming water, no slicing and dicing. It's incredibly simple, and the pickles are incredibly good for you, as all fermented things are. 

Weekly Walkthrough: Hot Harvest

Phew. It's bloody hot. This video reflects that; I'm only out in the sun for short bursts. Our plan for Father's Day is to go boating at a nearby reservoir - yeah, we're re-thinking that.

Enjoy!

Stupid Latin Names

How would you pronounce the above Latin name?

Many years ago, I went into Annie's Annuals looking for this plant. I had trouble finding it, so I went to one of the workers there and asked her to show me to the a-gah-STASH. The worker stood there looking at me, clueless. Finally a lightbulb went off and she said 'Ah!' and took me to the appropriate section. I wondered about that for days. What had I said wrong?

Fast forward to this past spring, sitting in class at Merritt College. One of my teachers explains that Latin botanical names are usually (though not always, wouldn't you know it) pronounced with the stressor on the antepenultimate syllable.  Hence the plant Pittosporum is pronounced pit-AH-spore-oom. I immediately flashed back to a-gah-STASH, and realized what I had said wrong all those years ago. I felt smug, and learn-ED.

Not long after, another professor bought the Agastache for the section of the garden I and my team were working on. "Oh!" I said to him, "I love a-GAH-stash-ay." That professor stood there looking at me like I was nuts. Finally he said, apologetically, "I say a-gah-STASH-ee." Well geez. So much for smug and learn-ED. I changed back to my original pronunciation and added his 'ee.'  "NOW I've got it right!" I thought.

Flash-forward to this morning, as I was buying two of this very same plant for my yard in a reputable nursery near here. On the descriptive sign below there was a helpful pronunciation guide. Neatly typed, it cheerfully read, "Say: a-GAH-stah-kee!" For heaven's sake, I thought. Just how many pronunciations are there???

So I came home and looked it up on Fine Gardening's Pronunciation Guide.  Wouldn't you know it? a-gah-STACK-ee. 

I mean. Come ON.

So screw it. There is no right way to say these things. I'm sticking with whatever comes out of my mouth in the moment. I suggest you do the same. 

On the Trail

Years ago, we used to watch a show on TV called "Sunrise Earth." We'd put it on while we were sleepily moving about our morning routine, getting dressed and eating breakfast. It never failed to help us get centered and grounded and focused on the day ahead.

Well, it wasn't long until Dora the Explorer replaced Sunrise Earth in our household, and now of course our teenagers either sleep right up until they simply MUST get out of bed, or just look at something on their computers until it's time to go. So much for centered and grounded.

However now that I'm out of school, I have been trying to implement a new routine, which is to get dressed and out of the house early (early is never a problem; the hens wake us up at 5:45. Who needs a rooster?) and out into the hills before it gets hot. This definitely helps me all through the day, in so many ways. 

This video is my attempt at a homemade Sunrise Earth. It's nowhere near, of course: I use my iPhone and the sounds are so overwhelming - the wind (the first minute of the video is very windy!), an airplane above, the whine of traffic on the 680 freeway which is never far from our ears, even if we're miles from it. But maybe you're sitting in your office having a sad desk lunch and you need a little nature to make the afternoon bearable. My humble hope is that this video will take you away from work stress, and into the hills with me, for four minutes.

Weekly Walkthrough: A Stroll Through the Garden

We open the hive, take a look at what's growing, and watch a bee in the artichokes.

Thanks for watching!