The summer of cooking continues.

Since summer vegetable season has really hit its stride, summer pickling season is now in full swing. Though I have one more tiny batch of kohlrabi pickles to process, we are now mostly talking in quarts and gallons instead of pints.

My beet pickled turnips turned out like they are supposed to, I believe, which is beautiful but terrible. I went back and read some of the recipes and they seem often to use those key words that mean inedible. Many say things like, "I wasn't sure at first, but I can't stop eating them." In other words, "I thought they tasted terrible, but you can still manage to choke them down." That is about where mine are at. Dave, Sebastian and I sampled them on Sunday and agreed that this was a one-bite sort of pickle. They are a little spongy and very, very intense. I think I may finally agree to give up on purple top turnips. But did I mention those Hakurai pickles I made... Now I know what to plant next year.

This week, we started harvesting pickling cukes from the Goat Lady. My goal is to make a bunch of different kinds of fermented cucumber pickles and to take careful notes, so I can figure out what works and what doesn't. I took home a bucket full on Tuesday, and Hollie and I spent Wednesday morning packing them into two gallon jars. I used a recipe from The Joy of Pickling called "No Dill Crock Pickles" because I didn't have any dill on hand. We packed them in salt brine with some white vinegar, allspice, fennel seed, black pepper and lemon peel.

I also took home about 10 pounds of yellow squash, which Hollie and I processed with some onions and salted so it could drain overnight.

Yesterday, I went out to the Goat Lady (kids in tow) to harvest more cucumbers and finish and can the squash. I picked another bucket full of cukes, and packed two more gallons of fermented pickles. The first was based on Chris Schlesinger's Westport Barrel Cukes recipe. I used small whole cukes, packed them in salt brine with some white vinegar, lots of fresh dill, sliced onions, a few cloves of garlic, some jalapenos, mustard seed, and about 1/2 a cup of horseradish.

For the second gallon, I used the larger cukes, cut into spears, and added a little cider vinegar to the brine along with a few green chiles and a handful of pickling spice, which included allspice, cloves, bay leaves, red pepper, and black pepper, and maybe a few other things.

We cooked the squash according to a bread and butter zucchini recipe out of The Joy of Pickling. We rinsed the squash and onion well; cooked them in vinegar and sugar with mustard seed, caraway, and turmeric; packed them in quarts; and processed them in a water bath. They turned out really beautiful. The yellow squash with the yellow turmeric combines for a great, golden effect.

We'll see how they taste.

Today, while the kids are asleep, I plan to process the remaining cucumbers and get them soaking in lime. Lime has really gone out of style in the past few years because it is a total pain, but I think it is worth it. It gives the veggies a dense, crunchiness that is often (I think falsely) described as crispness. Pickles made with lime don't snap in your mouth, they just have a really good bite to them. I think it is essential to making authentic Carolina-style sweet pickles, my personal favorite.