Pickle Mania

We spent part of our Labor Day at pickle mania. Bread and Butter pickles, using Marty Hankins' blue ribbon winning recipe, and sweet hot pepper pickles, adapted from the Pepper Relish recipe found in "The Complete Book of Home Preserving" by Ann Seranne, circa 1955. We adapt her relish recipe by using all hot peppers rather than "add one or two hot peppers, chopped" to the bell peppers the original recipe calls for. All hot banana peppers, plus a couple of hotter than hot habaneros and some onion, garlic...that ought to do it! Nice mix of orange, yellow and red. The bread and butter pickles combine onion, cucumbers and green bell peppers which first soak in an icy, salty brine for several hours before seasoning with celery seed and mustard seed. We'll see how this year's batch turns out - at least we remembered to thoroughly drain them, with cheese cloth, unlike last year...

Yum! Pickle Mania, Mania!