That, sour disgusting smell of vinegar.

I had an absolute blast today! I channeled my inner old person and canned me some pickles! I turned twenty cucumbers into six pint jars of Ross's Dickles! I've got friends to thank for that one.

Yeah, that's a lot of slicing alright. A couple of months ago, I was really considering picking up a mandolin, but, figured that I wouldn't need it. WRONG! After this much slicing, my hands hurt in weird places. I sliced 'em up, tossed them in some brine to get them pre-soaked, and then started packing clean, hot jars. I made my canning liquid in a tea kettle with apple cider vinegar, peppercorns, a little salt, and a few cups of sugar. After heating it, I poured the mixture into the jars, stuck a plastic spatula in each one to get the air bubbles out, and then dropped them in my canning pot. It's a big mutha, and was able to hold all six jars at once. I boiled them for an hour or so, pulled them out, and listened for the snap that says, "Yo. I've got a good seal over here." All six jars are resting on wire cookie racks right now while I wait for them to cool off. The whole process took a couple hours, which is much quicker than I thought it would.

After getting these processed so quickly, and, to all appearances, so well, I am feeling pretty confident about getting even more things from the garden canned. I've got a ton of okra coming up, but I've never been a big fan of pickled okra, so I'll have to figure something out. I also have a ton of tomatoes still coming, so I'm definitely looking forward to pasta sauce, and maybe even some tomato soup. I found a pretty good website that has a lot of really good canning recipes. If you're interested, check out canning-recipes.com It's got a lot of really basic stuff on there, including a recipe for catsup that I'm more than a little pumped about trying to figure out.

I listened to the new Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album while I was working today. It's called Mojo and it definitely has my seal of approval.