Overgrown Cucumbers = Red Hot Pickles

Miss a couple days in the garden, and you’ll find yourself with a supply of overgrown vegetables and a sinking feeling that tells you that you’re being wasteful. That’s what happened to me this week. I only have two cucumber vines, but they really know how to produce. I wish they would have taught my squash and zucchini something about producing – I didn’t get one single squash or zucchini from my garden this year! Thankfully, my mother shared her harvest.

I started to throw these guys away, but then I remembered what my mom used to do with overgrown cucumbers. She made Red Hot Pickles. My family and I just LOVE those crispy, crunchy things. We eat them as fast as we can get them. She hasn’t made them in the last couple of years, but when I started talking to her about them, she managed to produce one last jar from her pantry – YUM!

I don’t have her exact recipe, but it’s similar to this one – Red Hot Pickles at cooks.com. It’s pretty much like other pickle recipes, except that you add red hot candy (sometimes called cinnamon imperials) and cinnamon sticks. The end product is a pickle that tastes something like a spiced apple. It’s probably not something you’d want to put on a hamburger, but it’s GREAT with almost any other dish.

Keeping it real,

What’s her secret?

The garden is much nicer early in the morning, and the vegetables are so crisp! We picked some of everything that was ready:

• Green Lima Beans
• Black Eyed Peas
• Pole Beans
• Okra
• Tomatoes
• Corn
• Carrots

After you’ve peeled, shelled, scraped, and chopped, add the veggies to the meat stock. You don’t really need much meat, but you do need the bones – it just tastes better that way. We used a few beef short ribs and let them boil while we picked and prepared the veggies (remove the bones before adding the vegetables). Add salt, pepper, beef bullion, and any other seasonings that you enjoy, bring to a boil, turn the heat down, cover and simmer until the veggies are tender. One other secret method mother uses is baking the okra before adding it to the pot. It’s supposed to keep the okra from becoming slimy.

Later, when the soup is almost ready (and your stomach is growling because you’ve been smelling it cook all day), make some cornbread sticks or muffins – they are the perfect mate to fresh vegetable soup. I love to use cast iron cookware for this job. Add a little cooking oil to each stick or muffin section and heat in a 450 degree oven before adding the cornbread mix. That’s the secret to really crisp crust.

What more can I say?

Keeping it real,