Of pickles and such

Today I'd like to borrow pictures from my sister's blog, to show you what we've been up to lately.

Homemade pickles! Mmm, mmm! The best. This is the first "preserving" we've done with our produce this year. ...Though I can't really say it's preserving, because cucumbers go twice as fast when they're in this form! We made two quarts and three pints but, as you can seen in the picture, we're down to three already. Several of us just like to eat these pickles plain!

I guess I should correct the use of "we." We did not make these pickles; Mom did. But I am determined that I shan't miss out on the action next time. I want to learn how to do it. She shared the recipe with me, but that's not the same as being out in the kitchen when she's doing it.

Yesterday, some friends of ours told us that they are getting an over-abundance of cucumbers from their garden, and they didn't know what to do with them. They didn't know how to make homemade pickles, so they....were very creative. They bought a great big jar of store pickles, ate the pickles all up, sliced their cucumbers, and soaked them in the store-made brine. It worked! Isn't that cool? Talk about ingenuity.

Cucumbers aren't the only things that have been growing around here. This tomato is the biggest yet from our garden this year. Of course, it doesn't hold a candle to our biggest tomato ever:

We got this guy last year. I don't know how many tomato sandwiches we got out of him, but I do remember we had to cut each slice in half to fit it on a piece of bread.

I wonder if we'll beat the record this year?