Saturday was a busy day.
I got up early and drove a short ways into the gorge to hike up Angels Rest –
I then drove back across the city and hit up Krugers Farm and got a boatload of produce. Let the pickling games begin I said to no one. 
Even though I was planning on doing the bulk of the work the next day, I still had some prep work to do. I wanted to do half the giant set of cucumbers as a open fermentation batch, and half processed in the canner. So I cut and washed a batch of of cucumbers and made a batch of brine. For these I put in a food-grade plastic bucket, (I used a fermenter from brewing) covered it in brine and dill, and weighted them with a plate. See from this poor cell phone photo
These I’ll let sit for a week and then put in jars to store in the refrigerator.
The rest of the cucumbers I washed, cut the ends off, and pricked with a fork. I then rubbed them with a healthy dose of canning salt, covered with water in bowls and held down with plates.
When that was all finished, I relaxed by enjoying some tasty Tartare by Bear Republic at a local bottle shop before biking off to the Timbers game that night. And what an excellent game it was. The crowd was amped, the teams were fighting for the lead. The victory was well needed to pull Portland out of their summer slump.
Sunday back to the produce. I first headed over to the local Farmers Market and grabbed a sweet onion. I also biked by the local New Seasons grocery store and snagged a few lemons. Then it was canning time.
I wanted to start with something simple, so I pulled out the berries. I had two pints of blackberries and two pints of raspberries. The blackberry jam was as basic as basic comes, so I washed and cleaned them and them covered them in sugar. Mash it together and dump it in a pot to boil. With the raspberries I cut slivers in a jalapeno and cooked it along with the fruit.
I had no idea how long to boil it so I totally winged it. Online internet research told me about the “Plate Test” which is the only thing I found useful in determining how long to cook the fruit. While I cooked the jams I got the canner filled with water and started boiling. One thing I’ll definitely be doing next time is using another brewing tool – my propane burner. I spent way to much time waiting for that pot to boil.
After the fruit was canned, and that mess cleaned, I moved to the pickles. I put all my jars in the canner to pre-heat and cover in water. In another large pot I mixed a vinegar/water brine and started that boiling. I had one extra cucumber when I was all done packing, so I got pretty lucky with my guess. I also mixed it up with the sweet onion I purchased earlier in the day, cut jalapenos, and garlic.
And now I have to wait while these hopefully get tasty.
Recipies
Berry Jam
- 2 pints of berries should be about a pint of jam(I used raspberries and blackberries in this case)>
- 1 1/2 cup of sugar
Wash and clean the berries. Put them in a bowl and mash with a potato masher until you get them all juice. Add the sugar and continue to mix. Place in pot and bring to boil. Boil until it passes the plate test. Add it to your jars and boil for 10 minutes.
Wild Fermentation Pickles
For the spice mix I used a mix of dried dill seeds, peppercorns, cloves, bay leafe, caraway seeds, and mustard seeds. This is a great place to experiment with spices.
- 1 TB of Spice Mix
- 6 cucumbers washed with 1/8th off each end cut off
- 4 cups boiling water
- 1 1/2 tb pickle salt
- 1 head of fresh dill
- 3/4 cup of apple cidervinegar
- 2 cloves of garlic
Mix the boiling water spices and vinegar and simmer for 1 minute. Pour in food grade plastic bucket.
Put the pickles, head of dill, and garlic in the bucket and hold down with plate. The goal is to keep the everything submerged under the liquid. You can also expirement here with sweet onions, jalapenos, or other vegtables to alter the flavor.
Let sit for 1 week and then move to jars inrefrigerator
For the dill pickles I used the recipe from Simple Bites which was super easy to follow
These are the breaks 