This past Thursday, we went over to Selma to see a show my friend Tara Stallworth Lee had up in Gallery 905. She used all these images from around Craig Field during WWII, with a focus on the domestic labor that kept the airfield fed and taken care of.
I tell you all this not to remind you of 20th century wartime, but to tell you I bought a piece that really spoke to me. It was an image of a woman named Mrs. Driggers, inspecting all her recent canning work. Before her, a table with a pressure canner. Behind her, a shelf that extends out of frame, stocked full of canned pickles, preserves, and jellies.
It seems to have come into my world at just the right time: when I’ve started pickling things.
When I first learned how to can anything, it was muscadine and scuppernong jelly.
My grandfather would pick me up from school and take me over to a fellow Baptist deacon’s house in Gallion. I’d grab a five-gallon bucket and get to picking on the muscadine arbor, while my grandfather handled the scuppernongs. I’d sneak a few muscadines, the perfectly ripe ones, in my mouth and tear through their thick skin to the sweetness inside.
By the time we’d be ready to call it quits, I’d have a stash of muscadine pits in the bellows of my cheeks to spit out. Then, it was canning time, which always meant lots and lots of boiling.
See, we didn’t have a pressure canner, we just did water baths. My grandfather had one of those black, sponge-speckled canning pots with a wire grate to balance the jars on.
We’d cook down the muscadines, the whole kitchen smelling like hot grape juice, with what felt like an impossible amount of sugar. Before I knew it, I’d be wiping seals and lowering jars into a water bath to seal. All in a whirlwind afternoon.
In my adult years, I’ve enjoyed the process of slowing down a bit more. Working with more old-fashioned canning recipes really helps you stop and smell the roses, or the fig preserves, a bit more.
Speaking of fig preserves, the first time I made those, it was my first time dealing with a canning recipe that took longer than an afternoon. You wash the figs in baking soda, drain them, boil them in syrup, let them rest, then repeat for a number of days.
At the end, you get fig preserves that are as soft as can be, and better than Alaga on a biscuit.
Of course, I always have to mention the bumper crop of pears I received last year that had me making pear preserves over two days.
That brings me to this year’s venture: a new pickle recipe.
Now, I’m all in on bread and butter pickles, especially if they are a little spicy. Wickles is the brand of pickles that lives in our fridge year-round, so I’m no stranger to the sweet ’n spicy combo.
However, our cousin Katie has continued a tradition of these, well, rather involved pickles.
If last week’s icebox cake was a walk in the park, this week’s pickles are a trek across the Himalayas. That’s a bit of exaggeration, but as I’m writing this, I’m only halfway through the process.
Yes, my cucumbers are still brining—are they pickles yet? Well, the next seven days will tell.
No these are not eight-day pickles, or even ten-day pickles, but fourteen-day pickles.
Some of you may be throwing your hands up already and thinking “Well, this one isn’t for me,” but let me urge you to consider the ease of these old-fashioned recipes.
Sure, the process is stretched out over a couple days or more, but you’d do the same for a good pocketbook roll or brining your chicken before frying it. There’s some recipes that just require that little bit of extra time, not necessarily effort.
Besides, the first seven days of this recipe is just letting your cucumbers sit in boiled salt water. The latter portion is more akin to the process for preserves recipes I’ve used in recent years, where a syrup is poured over, then cooked, then added to, then cooked some more.
I call it “pickling them to death.”
Yet, I won’t fault you for just calling them what they are—really good pickles.
Fourteen-Day Pickles
Wash cucumbers and cut in one-fourth inch thick slices. To 2 gallons of sliced cucumbers, add 1 gallon of boiling water and 2 cups of salt. Use a stone jar for brining. Let stay in brine for 7 days.
On the 8th day, remove from brine. Place cucumbers back in empty jar and add 1 gallon boiling water.
On the 9th day, remove the water. Put the cucumbers back in the empty jar and add 1 gallon boiling water and a piece of plumb about the size of a walnut.
On the 10th day, remove the pickles from the alum water. Make a syrup of 1 quart vinegar, 2 quarts sugar, and 1 1/2 Tablespoons of mixed pickling spice. Boil for 4 minutes and pour over cucumbers.
On the 11th day, pour off the syrup into a pot, reheat, and pour back over cucumbers. Repeat this step for the 12th and 13th day.
Finally, on the 14th day, pour the syrup off into a pot. Boil for 4 minutes and pour over cucumbers that have been packed into jars. Seal.
Now, for some notes.
If you’re wondering what a piece of alum the size of a walnut is, it’s about 1 heaping Tablespoon.
If you’re wondering where to find a good stone jar, might I suggest a piece of Allen Hamm pottery to add to your stoneware repertoire. Although, any of these flea markets around have a stone crock you can chuck your cucumbers into.
If all else fails, there’s always a mixing bowl and some dinner plates handy to weigh everything down.
Whenever you’re pickling or fermenting something, you want to be wary of pellicles, basically a scum of yeast and bacteria that can form over the top if everything is not submerged properly.
It’s harmless, but it has the potential to make your pickles (or anything you’re fermenting) rather dull and flavorless.
Also, this recipe was directly transcribed from a cookbook that is old enough to spell syrup as “sirup.” So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Last year, I told myself I was going to get more serious about canning things and spent weeks searching for the perfect canner.
I’ve become one of those people that is always griping about how terribly things are made now. It feels like everything that used to be made out of cast iron or stainless steel, is now just flimsy plastic and computer chips.
Earlier this spring, when I was looking at manual push reel mowers, I was within an inch of my life from buying an all cast iron one from the 1930s. I mean, if it still works after all these years, what’s to say it won’t go for another 90 years!
My canning urge led me to a 1940s National Pressure Canner and Cooker, with a functioning pressure gauge and immaculate seal.
It’s a giant, thick with pre-war metal, and generous wooden handles so you don’t burn yourself.
Canning under pressure seems like such a dangerous undertaking, but it really isn’t too dissimilar from a water bath, you just have to pay attention to the gauge and the steam.
So far, I’ve managed to can my preserves with little trouble, but I have yet to try out a batch of pickles.
Thankfully, our friends and family have been quite generous with their crookneck squash and cucumbers enough that we’ve been silly with things to pickle these past couple weeks.
So, if you want to donate to the cause, there’s a jar or two of pickles on the other end of it for you. Just ask anyone, I’m good for the labor.
Better yet, try this old-fashioned way of making them yourself. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get a batch of pickles out when you stretch it over a number of days—or two weeks, for that matter.
