Quick pickles...or what to do with all those beans.

Veggies cut up to make Achar Segar - and Indonesian quick pickle

So....I love beans, and I harvest a lot of them - especially the purple-spotted dragon beans I love.   I also have a bean teepee that's in full effect right now.   But the problem with beans is that you need to pick them almost every day - they are best when they are just a few inches long - in just a few days they can grow to 7" monsters that while still might be crunchy and sweet, can also be a little tough.

So what to do with all these beans?   Well...rinse them, cut off the tips and tails, and throw them out for hungry dinner guests while waiting for the rest of the food to finish.   Or steam them for 3-4 minutes and cover them with a little salt and butter.

Preserving beans?   Well, I've tried just throwing them into a plastic freezer bag and into the chest freezer - and the result is ok - defrost, saute and serve - but still a little squishy.

How to make pickles and sauerkraut - Part I

All right, kids, I had to do a little quick research on wikipedia before writing this blog entry....because a) I got confused reading all the different recipes to make pickles, and b) there are at least two, completely different ways to make pickles, and I wanted to make sure I had the terminology/verbiage right for this.  

So....If I say that I am making pickles, there are two different methods I could be talking about.   One method, that I'll talk about in another post, is to simple submerge a vegetable in vinegar (or a vinegar-salt-water-sugar-and-spices) mixture for a certain period of time.   I've done this with carrots, beans, beets, onions, garlic and cucumbers.   The finished product can either be canned (safely, because of the high acid content of the vinegar), or stored in the refrigerator and eaten within two weeks (although some recipes say these "refrigerator pickles" can be good for months at a time...I've certainly eaten commercial pickles months after I opened them and stuck them in the fridge...but then again, I often eat things I shouldn't....:)

Harvest Season

Harvest, 8/26

So....I haven't posted in a little while - BECAUSE I'VE BEEN GARDENING MY TAIL OFF!    And I've even got some other people involved in my capers (ie, fermenting...the final (?) frontier).   More on that later....

So....what happens in the garden (even a postcard-sized urban garden) in August to keep a girl too busy to blog?   Everything. 

Summer Squash refrigerator pickles

Ingredients

 So my friend Dave calls up with a quandry.   He's just inherited an overflow of squash from a neighbor's CSA.   He wants to know if they can be pickled.   They can, says I, put its hot as balls and canned pickles often come out squishy.   What's to be done?   Well....refrigerator pickles.