Salty Dill Pickles

Spicy Salty Dills

Here's another of those family recipes passed down by the women in my family for generations.

Gather or buy your pickling cucumbers FRESH. Pickle the day you pick if you want good pickles!
My family recycles gallon and half gallon jars. If you don't get them to reseal you must store them in the fridge. In fact, store a few jars in the fridge anyway. It makes them nice and crunchy! Some recipes use pickling spices, or ferment their pickles for a few days, we don't.

Here's what you need before you start making brine:

• pickling cucumbers
• fresh dill, or dried seed & weed if you must
• fresh garlic
• fresh hot peppers, if you want (jalapeno, cayenne, hot banana...)
• pickling salt
• white vinegar
• jars, lids & rings (washed & sterilized)
• Pot deep enough for waterbath (check out your county extension office website for info on canning) I don't immerse my jars of cukes. I flip them upside down in a pan and only add water to above the neck and bring to a boil a couple of minutes. Otherwise I get overcooked, soft pickles. My mom never did either and we are still living. :)

Wash cukes, fresh dill, and peppers in cold water. Heat your brine while you pack the jars with slices, spears, or whole cukes. Each qt. jar gets:

• 1 pepper (if you want them spicy)
• one bunch of dill stems, seed heads, or 1 tsp. dill seed/weed
• 2 peeled garlic cloves
• As many cukes as you can cram in

The basic recipe for the brine is going to be a ratio of 2:1:1/4
That's 2 parts water:1 part vinegar:1/4 part pickling salt.
In case your ratios are rusty, here's a starting point:

The Brine

• 2 quarts water
• 1 quart white vinegar
• 1 cup salt

It will take approximately 1 pint of brine per quart. The cukes take up half the room in the jar.
Bring the brine to a boil. (Whatever you do don't lean over the kettle and breathe in or you'll be sorry.) Place your jars with cukes into a cake pan or the sink to catch salty spills. Pour each jar to within about 1/4 inch from the top, trying to cover the cukes. Some you may waterbath, which my mom does upside down in a pan for gallon jars. Not that I'm recommending, just telling you. Some you can use clean, sterile, used, lids on and store in the fridge.

What if there were a video camera?

Lights, camera, action!

What if there were a video camera recording your words, tone of voice and facial expression when you are speaking to the people you love most? I ask this question because I recently said I needed to record a family member's speech when they think they are sounding perfectly nice, and they aren't. Then I started thinking about my own speech. Hmm, convicting.

What if there were an constant audio visual presentation of what comes out of my mouth and the way in which it spews? Unfortunately God sees and hears. Sometimes it's not even what we say, but the way we say it that is offensive. More than offensive to our family, it's offensive to a Holy God whom we say we honor and love. To be a wise woman I need to backtrack, ask God and my family's forgiveness and start over with words that are more pleasant to hear, even if they are a reprimand for a child. If we want respect, it has to start with us.

"My lips will not speak wickedness..." Job 27:4a

^"Yes, my inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak right things. " Proverbs 23:16

"A time to keep silence, And a time to speak" Ecclesiastes 3:7

"But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment." Matthew 12:36

"For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." Matthew 12:34b

Teddy Bear Bread and Pecan Carmel Cinnamon Rolls

Benjamin and I made a teddy bear bread out of part of the dough I made for cinnamon rolls. Can you tell it was fun?

Just a little flour

Bear bear has raisin eyes and nose.

Good job Benji!

Bear bread is easy to make with any bread dough. After the first rising, form the bear parts like you would if you were playing with Play-dough, and stick them together with a dab of water. Let rise until doubled and bake in the oven. Bear bread loves honey!

Nose is already gone

Yummy arms!




Pecan Carmel Cinnamon Rolls

• 2 1/2 c. flour + more for kneading in
  
• 1/2 c. wheat flour or wheat germ
  
• 1 pkg. yeast
• 1 tsp. salt

Mix above ingredients together in a bowl. Add:

• 1/4 c. sugar or honey
• 1/2 c. oil or melted butter
• 1 1/2 c. warm milk

Stir together very well, or use mixer to beat together add:

• 2 eggs
  

Beat until the dough is elastic and add as much flour as you can stir in with a spoon. Turn dough out on a floured surface and knead for a few minutes, working enough flour into the dough that it is smooth and not sticky. Place dough in a bowl with a little oil, turning it over to coat. Cover and let the dough rise until doubled. While the dough is rising you can mix up the pan goodies, for lack of a better term. It's the stuff that will be on top of your sweet rolls once they've baked and you turn them upside down. The more goo, the more gooey. The last ones I made needed more. Use your own judgment. If you want dry rolls ignore me. :P

Pan goodies
In each 9 in baking pan (you will use 3-4 pans) stir together approximately:

• 1/3 c. brown sugar
• 1/4 c. melted butter
• chopped pecans

This pan does not have enough goody in it. Don't go by the photo.

Punch dough down once it has risen and divide into 2 parts. Working on a LARGE floured surface roll out the dough into a sort of a rectangle. You can try to keep the narrowest width 10 inches or so, but it doesn't have to be prefect. On the dough:

• 1/2 c. melted butter or more (I sometimes use half olive oil)
  
• sugar and or honey
• Sprinkle with cinnamon
  

Roll your dough up like a jelly roll starting on the longest side. Using a sawing motion with a sharp serrated knife, cut slices about 1 or 1 1/2 inches thick. Remember, they will almost double in thickness when they rise.

Before I cut my roll. It's leaking a little honey and butter. YUM

Place them into the prepared pans and let rise until almost doubled. Bake at 350 until done. Immediately flip them over in the pan or onto a plate. You can drizzle with some icing if you want. Serve right away. No photos of the finished product, they were eaten before I remembered.

Nut Butters

You can make your own yummy nut butter from whatever crunchy, delicious nuts you like. Some people use raw nuts, but I like mine roasted.

Oh the possibilities! Almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans, sunflower seed and of course peanuts make wonderful nut butters.

If you buy the nuts pre salted they might be a bit too salty, so use your own judgment. Also, you can decide how smooth you want your butters. Smooth with a few crunchy bits thrown in near the end of processing is what I like. All nuts have great oil content but need a little more to make them truly spreadable. You can add a bit of olive oil, flax seed oil or canola. Only add what it needs.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love sunflower seed, so I recently made sun butter.

Here are some nice recipes to use your nut butters in at Cooking Light. You can also do a Google search for cooking with nut butters. You could try making a chocolate nut butter with a little cocoa, or melted dark chocolate. If you use cocoa you may need a little sweetener of some kind.

Nut Butter

• 2 cups of unsalted nuts or seeds of your choice
• 1/4 tsp. salt (to taste)
  
• 2-4 Tb. oil

Place your nuts and salt into a food processor or grinding stone. :) Process the nuts/seeds until chopped finely. Some will start to release oil and turn to a dry paste. Add oil a little at a time until the butter is the consistency you'd like it to be. Store in the fridge. Simple, huh?

2009-10 School Year

Our course line-up this year for 11th grade:

Bible
Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2
Apologia Marine Biology
Notgrass Exploring Government
History of the World DVDs
Spanish
Total Language Plus - Starting with The Hiding Place this year
Painting with Donna Woodall
Guitar, fiddle & mandolin with Mrs. Vida, of course

Spiced Peaches

My family has always called them Pickled Peaches, but if you call anything "pickled", people automatically think of sweet or dill pickles and decide they won't even try them. That's okay too, because they'll leave more for me to eat!

My momma, Betty, made these as her mother, Edith, made them as her mother, Addie, made them as her mother made them.......So you can see this recipe has been handed down through the years. I have great memories of eating perfectly spicy peaches, which were rationed out because we loved them so much and there were only a few precious jars. My kids must learn to make these and pass on the love!

I've read recipes where people advise you to bring the peaches to a boil and let them sit to soak and plump up overnight. That might be a good idea since mine kinda shrank after I canned them. I don't recommend cooking them for very long, because if you start with ripe peaches they'll be soft after canning. How do you know if a peach is ripe? Press your thumb gently on the top side, if there's plenty of swish it's ripe. So here's the basic recipe:

Pickled Peaches

(This made 5 quarts for me)

• 4 ½ cups sugar
• 3 cups water
• 1 ½ cup vinegar
• whole cloves
• stick cinnamon
• whole allspice
• ripe peaches, peeled and stems removed. 4-5 per jar
• Fruit Fresh or lemon juice
• wide mouth canning jars and lids

As you peel the peaches place them in a little water that has some Fruit Fresh stirred into it and roll the peaches in it. Stick cloves into your peeled peaches. About 5-7 cloves for each peach.

Heat sugar, water and spices until they reach boiling. Add peaches to the syrup and bring to a boil. Let them sit overnight if you want. I would put them in the fridge after cooling.

When you're ready to can them place the peaches and spices in the clean jars, fill to within ½ inch of the top with the syurp, wipe jar rims and place the lids and rings on. Process in a canner or water bath. Water bath around 35 minutes. In your canner I'd process at the pressure and time your canner recommends for peaches, or fruit. I do remember... sometimes momma just got everything boiling and put hot lids on and turned them upside down for a bit to seal. Not saying that's safe or anything, just remembering.

Wait a few weeks to open and enjoy them.