Homemade Dill Pickles (fast. . . no canning required!)

So far I've made three batches of homemade dill pickles. Every morning I go into the garden, there's a another "surprise" cucumber. This is my best cucumber crop yet. A few years back, my first pickling disaster was so salty, it nearly required eating a pound of bananas to offset the spike in my sodium levels. A detox from dill pickles then ensued. This recipe is forgiving and allows for some latitude in the amount of salt you'd like. I prefer my pickles a little more briny and less salty.

 The cucumber season has been plentiful. I planted about six seeds back in April indoors. They were about two or three years old. Truth be told, cucumber seeds will produce better the older they are. (When they fall off the cliff in terms of their germination rate, I have no idea--but I had read this fact about the cuke seeds and fortunately for me, I am always saving seeds.) Thus, I am experiencing my first "old cucumber seed" bonanza this summer.

 At first, I wasn't sure I'd have room for them--they spread and like tons of garden space. If you're savvy about it and have the "energy"--they will climb a trellis. I skipped the trellis. But I did give them plenty of room to grow. I have pickling cucumbers and slicers. The difference being, one is for pickling (obviously). The pickling cukes are smaller and quite prolific producers. I companion planted them with two bronze fennel/dill plants and zucchini. I love the bronze fennel against the bright green of the other foliage. Companion planting tip: always plant dill with your cucumbers!  

Grab some pickling cucumbers the next time you're at the farmers' market. Then rush home and make these dill pickles. Or next  year, plan ahead and plant your own cukes. They are incredibly easy to grow and will do well in containers, too. The best cucumbers are made from the most freshly picked cucumbers. Ask the grower when the pickles were picked. 

Ask if Peter Piper picked them. . . just get them as fresh as you can.

Grab some pickling spices. The difference in your pickle flavor will be amazing. The McCormick's brand is the one I used. 

Because you aren't using a water bath canning method to make these pickles, they are only good for about four-five days in the fridge (if they last that long). Store them in a glass container with a lid and enjoy!

Homemade Dill Pickles 

*Adapted from Rachael Ray

3-4 pickling cucumbers sliced on the diagonal about 1/2" thick

1 cup white vinegar

2 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cloves garlic minced

2 T. fresh dill chopped

2 tsp. pickling spice

In a small sauce pan over medium heat, add vinegar, sugar and salt and bring just to a boil. In a medium bowl--one that is a bit flat (so the cucumbers can be submerged in the vinegar to soak up all the goodness) add your cucumbers, garlic, fresh dill, and pickling spices--toss together in a bowl. Pour the warm vinegar mixture over all of this. Carefully toss the pickles around a bit to make sure the pickles all have a chance to soak up this yummy mixture. Store them in the fridge. These are better after they've had a chance to cool. *Note: if you taste the mixture and feel there needs to be more salt, just sprinkle more over the pickle/vinegar mixture.

Blogger Photo Restoration Complete! (How I Fixed the Google Plus "Mess"-- You're Welcome)

I am not going to tell you the last few days has been easy. A nightmare is more like it. (Felt like I was trapped in a cage with spider monkeys.) This "blog photo disappearing act" tragedy has happened to other blogspot bloggers. I feel your pain and possibly this made me even more determined to find a solution to this mess that nearly wiped out SIX YEARS of my digital life. Here's a caveat to remember: if you are going to blog on a free platform, recognize there are risks you take in doing so. I don't claim to know the inner workings of Google any more than the next person. However, I sort of have an "in" with regard to how search works (those digital footprints and detritus)--and his name is Dr. Thyme. So to you DH for these little monster moments you had to endure as I sat feverishly plucking my blog posts from cyberspace (dear god, over 450 of them)--thank you for your patience and understanding--and tissue-box-replacer man.

I hope in sharing my story, I am able to help at least one more person who may experience a similar meltdown, er, "problem". Or prevent the same disaster from happening to someone else.

Now for the details--and this is not complicated, but is very time consumptive:  

We Have A Problem. . .

Well. I think this may be my official "undoing." It appears the entire six years of photo history within my blog has been wiped away. All except those I decided NOT to delete in Google+. Why, may you ask, would you EVER do that? Delete photos. To save space, silly. I had moved my photos from my phone onto Google+ (to shore up more space on my phone--like you are supposed to do, like you are told to do). While doing so, decided, well, since I was "in there," may as well free up more space in Google+, because wouldn't that be nice to free up space for Google? So I deleted some photos of "old food" and whatnot. Years. Of. Food. And. Whatnot. . .GONE.

Never, never realizing for one single moment that I had just deleted 99.9 of my blog photo history. Because I am prone to hysterics, and yes, you could say I am near hysterical right now, I called my DH. Oh no, he said. When he says "oh no," this is very bad.

Vegan Funfetti Cupcakes with Black Raspberry Buttercream Frosting (. . . I was "berry" surprised by Rubus 'Bristol'!)

I was out in the back yard yesterday and had an I Spy moment while walking the kids. Mother Nature had gifted us with canes and canes of black raspberries. Apparently we once lived on top of a berry plantation. Out of sheer laziness I had decided to not "bother" trimming back some overgrowth of the thistle-bearing sticks that for years have demanded some attention from the pruning sheers. They are the ugliest things, really. And in winter they stick out of the ground with their red stems like nobody's business. All over. I am forever walking by the ragged jumbles telling myself get to those sticks. Never made it this spring. 

Lucky us!

Whoa. So glad I let things "go" a bit. 

Kelp Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing (Um, I may have a yarn "problem" plus we go hither and yon)

It was only a matter of time before "kelp" entered this blog. Last month, DH and I were searching for a vegan eatery in St. Louis. Finding a vegan restaurant in STL is very simple--there are only a handful. I overwhelm easily, so it's a win-win for me in deciding. We were near Forest Park, PuraVegan was ohsoclose. So that settled it for us. This isn't a restaurant review post, but if it were, major kudos would be handed out. I decided to have a kelp noodle salad. Dr. Thyme had the vegan burger. (No surprise there.) What happened next changed my eating for about two weeks. Kelp was all I could think about. Kelp was all I wanted. 

Vegan Chewy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies (in my garden and our 30-mile bike trip on the Katy Trail. . . whew.)

When something grabs my attention, like say a cookie recipe, life as we know it pretty much stops. Such was the case this afternoon. I had taken a nap. Napping is under appreciated. I don't indulge in them very often, but when I do, I will confess to feeling like a new woman after a little day time shuteye. Usually I'm hungry when I wake up. I suddenly had an urge for baking after spotting a "Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie" recipe on the Cook's Country blog, The Feed, while catching up on my reading (post nap). I probably shouldn't have been looking at food right after waking up. My whole afternoon schedule got re-arranged because of this cookie. Alas--I had to recreate a vegan version of the cookie. No problem-o. You will have to try this recipe to see for yourself if you agree about the "chewy" part. If you go to their post, they break down into helpful, straightforward speak why this recipe works. I just had to make sure it "worked" as a vegan cookie. And thank god it did because not only was I just waking up from my nap, my blood sugar demanded I have a cookie SOON. 

*And yes, I am well aware this is like the twentieth vegan chocolate chip cookie I've posted on this blog. But I ask, is there any such thing as "too many chocolate chip cookie recipes"? I think not.

Vegan Asparagus and Roasted Cauliflower "Quick" Pizza (A girl walks into the botanical garden with her camera and. . . )

Pizza always works in this house. I'll whip up a batch of pizza dough in the bread machine to make the task of having to knead and rise the dough less cumbersome (not that there's anything wrong with hand kneading--but just not right now), thereby allowing more free time for me to either traipse through the yard, walk the dogs or dig up weeds, knit, hike, run--you get the picture. I found the perfect pizza dough recipe on the King Arthur site. At three in the afternoon--(I realize this is late in the day for deciding on pizza, but my dinner planning skills are on hiatus), I placed the ingredients in the bread machine, programmed it for the "dough" process, removed it from the machine, split it in half, prepared one pie for use immediately, and the other was put in the fridge for later. So easy. So quick. My kind of spring cooking. Plus dinner for another night, too!

Vegan Green Tiredness-Be-Gone Smoothie (A little bit of everything today. . .and some knitting from my Yarnbox, too!)

I find my best smoothie recipes are those that have no recipe. Usually I have a craving for something packed with flavor and protein. I had just finished a four-miler on the treadmill and was famished. After dawdling around a bit afterward, I still felt tired. Usually my runs give me an energy boost. But given I am head-long into my mid-life "woman time" and have had a few horrible nights of sleep (which can make me cray-cray), I thought I might try a little less in the tummy today--go light on lunch and again at dinner--hoping to catch up on some much needed "good" sleep tonight. Well, smoothie was a success. Not only did it kick up my energy level, I was able to manage a yoga session after a house cleaning blitz whereupon I found myself "doing windows". And. . . I don't DO windows.

Vegan Blueberry Hemp Cinnamon Crunch Muffins (. . . an after ten mile run pick-me-up, me and sis visiting the flowers, mammograms and "more" of life at fifty)

Although the blog's been quiet, the life has been anything but that. Let's catch up a bit, then I'll talk about these amazing hemp muffins I created. (Hemp. Seed. My new best friend.) As I mentioned earlier, I signed up to run the GO! St. Louis Half Marathon . . . in two weeks. (Blog flashback moment: I broke my ankle on November 11th.) Yesterday I accomplished my biggest challenge in my training for the half to date: I ran a ten mile training run in just over two hours. Can you say "Happy"? (Which is my favorite running song, thank you Pharrell Williams.) No ankle pain! 

Vegan Banana Flaxseed Quick Bread (finished reading "Wild", now I want to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, too. . . except for this one little thing)

The bananas were a buck sixty-nine. For a whole bag! I love a deal. I love what my house smells like when I bake banana bread, too. There's no substitute for baked banana bread smell wafting through the home: no candle company, no spray, no plug-in fake smell thingy that does banana bread justice. I would have been content to eat this entire loaf for dinner last night. The bread literally takes only five minutes to prep, then bakes for about forty-five minutes and viola, you've got breakfast, snack time and late night all zipped up. There will be much banana bread, banana smoothie and banana cupcake happenings around here in the coming week. What I don't bake up, I'll peel and store in a plastic bag in the freezer for later.

Vegan Double Chocolate Chip Heart-Shaped Cookies (because he asked and because I needed chocolate. . . my half century/half marathon countdown begins)

I was having one of those recipe moments where I saw a picture, fell in love, scanned the ingredients, then stopped in my tracks after this: egg yolks. This cookie required four. Four egg yolks. Must I always be fighting the vegan fight? (Well, yes I must, but that's beside the point.) I had bookmarked AND stored this particular recipe twice. It was destined to be made, I just kept forgetting when it popped up as eye candy that there was this little hurdle to get over: Vegan Egg Conversion Nightmares. I've faced down many an egg. I'm not letting a little fancy-pants chocolate chip cookie ruin my kitchen 

chocolate hopes.

Vegan Winter Salad of Quinoa, Radicchio, Cabbage, Tart Cherries and Pistachios with Dijon Balsamic Vinaigrette (a return to running, there's a new guitar in town and why I used to love winter)

I keep our refrigerator continuously stocked with all of the greens necessary to whip up an impromptu salad like this one at the drop of a hat. Winter demands it, as I've found I feel one hundred percent better after consuming a meal of raw veggies (tossing in a bit of cooked quinoa amps up the protein level to boost my stamina). Mentally I need it. Physically I need it, too. The salad information will be covered shortly below if you care to skip this next part.

Vegan Chicken Noodle and Double Dumpling Soup (wellness, my ankle and new stuff. . . )

The biggest decision I had to make in creating this amazingly restorative soup was which pasta noodle would best suit the desired outcome. I didn't want anything puny. I wanted robusto. I had some wide Italian non-egg noodles lying around and thought they'd fit the bill perfectly. To add a bit of incredibly over-the-top mouth feel to the dish, I'd decided it wouldn't hurt if some dumplings joined the fray. This was probably my best cure-all soups I've made in years. Here's why I needed said soup. 

*Jump to the soup at the bottom of the post to avoid my ramblings.