Pickles

(NOTE: Please pardon the sad puns.)

Last Saturday Mom and I made pickles from cucumbers grown in our backyard. Our cucumbers are coming in almost faster than we can pick them!

Mom has made pickles before.  Her sweet pickles are out of this world! But I think this was her first time attempting dill pickles. Or at least the first time in a while. It was my first time ever participating in pickle-making. I was really excited!




Preparing everything takes a bit longer than the actual pickling process. Especially when you're not altogether sure what you're doing....










Our special tools >
I kind of felt like a doctor the way we had to sterilize everything...or thought we did....







<Ingredients

After slicing and stuffing as many cucumbers in a jar as possible we added the dill weed, pickling spice and peppercorns, then the vinegar/pickling salt concoction. After that we put the lids on and popped them into the water-bath. A little while later, we had pickles!

Our pickles looked delicious. This morning I braved the unknown and gave them the real test. I ate one. It tasted great! 

However, there is more to a pickle than looks and taste. Much more. Any pickle worth it's salt (no pun intended) must be crisp. Who wants a soft pickle? Soft pickles are like soft apples. Rotten.

Ours were mush.

Fail.

The story doesn't end here. We are not defeated. Mom and I will conquer the art of dill pickles. We will navigate the mazes of techniques and recipes until we reach the prize of the perfect blend of crunchy, cool, tartness.
Until then...we're in a pickle!

Family

Bed or pillow? Which is more important to you? Would you rather sleep with a pillow on the floor or on a bed with no pillow? I guess that seems like a pretty random question to you...until I explain my reasons for asking.

Last night I shared my room with two of my three nieces; one is 6 months, the other is three years. The 6-month-old wasn't a problem...unless you consider waking up at 4:30 wanting a bottle and playtime a problem. I didn't consider that too much of a problem because my mother and sister were both willing to take care of it for me. THE problem came when my three-almost-four-year-old niece wanted MY bed...AND my pillow!!! 

Now I love this niece to death. Just not enough to give up my sleep number bed AND my memory foam pillow. So I gave her a choice, "You can have my bed or my pillow but not both." Unfortunately this three-year-old answers the question I opened this post with the same way I would, "Uh, you can have the pillow; I'll take the bed."

*sigh* 

How come I have to be so nice? Any other person would probably have kicked this adorable girl right out of their bed and made her sleep on the bed made of old comforters. But then....Any Other Person is not this same adorable little girl's "best friend".

*smile*

OH! The real reason for this post is to say how incredibly awesome Moms are! It has been brought home to me, as I've been helping babysit my three nieces this week that, while being a Mom is amazing and fully rewarding, it is also a tough job and takes an incredible amount of energy and stamina. My nieces are soooo sweet (just this morning the oldest one came and woke me up specifically let me know there were donuts downstairs.), but keeping up with their questions and energy is quite a task! I can't imagine doing it 24/7 for years on end!

So, to all y'all Moms: thumbs up! Thank you and keep up the good work (because work it is, work worth doing!)

The other real reason I was posting was to show you our second painting project! Four of my siblings and I painted the kitchen cabinets for Mother's Day! My mom was gone for the weekend so we surprised her.

Sorry, I don't have a "before" picture...we are bad about that. But before our cabinets were stained a dark brown. Not entirely bad, but since our kitchen has no windows anymore it gets really dark. Also the cabinets are pretty old now so we thought we'd freshen them up!

My mom loves it! She's wanted the cabinets painted for a while now.

It is a shocker at first, but after a week I don't even notice it any more.

There, I think I have you caught up now. Now it's time to pose the bed or pillow question to my niece again. :)