I didn’t win any of the categories I entered in yesterday’s first-ever D.C. State Fair. Not jams or jellies, not pickles, not biggest vegetable. But when all the votes were counted, our zucchini bread and butter pickles–which came in third behind pickled peaches and pickled white asparagus–won us the overall title of “Best D.C.-Grown Food Product.”
In [...]
Entries Tagged as 'pickles'
We Win for Best Local Food in First-Ever D.C. State Fair
August 29th, 2010 · 7 Comments · garden
Tags: pickles·state fair·zucchini
What to Do with Green Tomatoes
August 23rd, 2010 · 5 Comments · Recipes, garden
I saved more than 10 pounds of green tomatoes from the marauding pack of field mice that have been devouring our kitchen garden lately. In the picture above you see what I salvaged from our Roma vines, the tomatoes we would normally use for canning. No ripe tomatoes to can here. Fortunately, some of our [...]
Spicy Cajun Pickles
August 20th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Recipes, garden
We look forward to these pickles every summer because they’re our daughter’s favorite and they really are spectacular. The way they’re made is a bit unusual, too. They’re lacto-fermented in a salt brine with a wee bit of vinegar and a heap of herbs and spices while in the jar. Then they’re moved into the [...]
A Little Sweetness in Your Dill Pickles?
August 19th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Recipes, garden
I’m convinced that the best dill pickles I’ve ever tasted had at least a little sugar in them. The traditional flavor combo–dill seed, mustard seed, peppercorns–just doesn’t do much for me. Yet I’ve had the hardest time finding a dill pickle recipe (I’m talking about vinegar pickles, of course) that gets me closer to the pickle [...]
Crazy for Cucumbers
June 24th, 2010 · 2 Comments · garden
How many cucumbers can one family eat?
We may soon find out. Somehow I’ve collected seed packets for eight different varieties of cucumbers–three slicing, five pickling. There was nothing to do but plant some of each to see how they all compare. Where the snap peas once stood, we now have a long row of cucumber [...]
Pickling Mustard Greens
May 29th, 2010 · 1 Comment · garden
Sometimes in the effort to put dinner on the table we find ourselves in a race with our vegetable plants, which sometimes would rather just make seeds, then die.
Such was the case with a patch of mustard greens I planted last fall. The mustard greens survived the winter–and four feet of snow–just fine. In the [...]
Hors d’Ouevres Buffet From The Garden
November 9th, 2009 · 2 Comments · dinner, garden
Our kitchen could be in a museum, it’s so old. But it’s big enough to fit a dinner party, start to finish, and the big island has enough counter space for a substantial buffet, a real advantage feeding a crowd.
When six friends came to dinner last night we went to the pantry for hors d’oeuvres [...]
Tags: buffets·entertaining·pickles
Garden Cleanup = Spicy Pickled Green Tomatoes
November 3rd, 2009 · 5 Comments · Recipes, garden
Here we are turning the page on October and still we’re cleaning up the garden from summer. Down comes the cucumber trellis. Out go the okra plants.
But what have we here? A Roma tomato plant covered in green tomatoes? And over here–green cherry tomatoes, dozens of them.
Should I regret the tomatoes never ripened, or rejoice [...]
Tags: green tomatoes·pickles
NYC Pickle Festival: Disappointment
October 8th, 2009 · 1 Comment · food news
We were totally smitten with New York City’s “International Pickle Festival” last year. Set in a classic Lower East Side streetscape in the old pickle district, it had all the low-key energy and charm of a block party. With great anticipation, we made the return trip last weekend only to find that the festival had been moved to [...]
Zucchini Bread & Butter Pickles
September 19th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Recipes, garden
One of the most dangerous things a gardener can do is go away on vacation. You never know what you’ll find when you come back.
The garden does not stop growing while you’re gone. We found this truism to be particularly obvious in the case of our favorite Italian summer squash, which had a habit of [...]
Tags: pickles·summer squash
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
