Mariner's Cookbook

I might have set the tone with that grower, when I told him that I wanted a lot of pickling cukes, but I didn't want to pay grocery-store prices for them. So anyway, after wasting a couple of weeks looking for local produce at reasonable prices, I finally gave in and made the trek to a well known "international market" in DeKalb county, and there I found what I was looking for: box quantities of pickling cukes at bulk prices. Forty. pound. boxes. Do you even know what a forty pound box of cucumbers looks like? Oh, and these cucumbers? They came from Tennessee... close enough to local for me!

So I looked at the box, and said "Yeah, let's do it," optimistically thinking that I might get some of my offspring interested in a joint processing effort. Hope springs eternal, even in the face of overwhelming adversity, but regardless...

Anyway, to assist me in disposing of the excess cucumbers, my Honey decided that she would make some (non-fermented) kosher style dills using a recipé she had had a great deal of success with a number of years ago, so she took about 10 lb of the produce off my hands; and some of said offspring (never inclined to turn down free food) offered to take a few pounds as well, so I was left with only about 20 lb to turn into fermented pickles.

There must have been a tad more than 40 lb of cukes in that box though, because we probably used two or three pounds as salad cukes; and you know what? They tasted better than the ones sold for that purpose in the grocery!