We've Got Pickles!!!!

One of my friends decided she would like to learn to can, and we both had today free, and I thought--perfect, that will be one week after the last batch of pickles, which should give the garden enough time to grow enough cucumbers get about 4 quarts (liters, to those in countries smart enough to switch to the metric system) of pickles.
Does my capacity to continually be wrong amaze anyone else?This is more than 4 GALLONS of cucumbers! And I picked these things just a week ago! That's it--no more Miracle Grow for the cucumbers. I washed and cut and salted and brined while Andy dug out space in the refrigerators for:Knowing that we had cucumbers for 12 quarts of pickles, I decided to drag out the pressure canner for this. I don't know how to pressure can yet, but I bought it because the advertisements said it could hold two layers of quart jars, and we were beyond the capacity of my normal canner.

We cheerfully set to work--Lisa peeled garlic cloves, which was actually trickier than it sounds because the paper skins don't come off of fresh garlic very easily, while I got the brine and jars ready
And then we hit our first snag. That's a really big canner, and it's really deep, and when it's half full of boiling water and there's a jar that is laying on the bottom of the canner, it can be really difficult to get out
That part wasn't covered in the manual. Know what else wasn't included? That 2 layers of quart jars would be JUST under the rim of the canner, making it very difficult to cover the top layer, and impossible to keep the boiling water IN the canner AND that it takes FOREVER to get that much water to return to a boil. Granted, it is a pressure canner not a water-bath canner, but the instruction book does say it can be used as a water-bath canner.

So....45 mintues later, we finally had processed the pickles for 15 minutes in boiling water and....12 quarts of pretty thoroughly cooked pickles. We might have a bit of mush-factor on these, but we had a good time.


And I had my second "cheat" last night:
I know, it's only a bite-size Reese's peanut butter cup, but this was the first chocolate candy I've had since December, and I was a bit concerned about side effects, which is rather funny as chocolate was once prescribed for various ailments--which I would guess created a whole bunch of hypochondriacs. I am happy to say that while there are unknown substances in chocolate, my body does not care in the slightest and the next time I use chocolate for a cheat, I'm getting an entire candy bar.

And Andy will have to pry me off the roof during the resulting sugar high......