Pickling pickles (ofwel: augurken inmaken)

I didn't know that gherkins are hairy. But they are. And they taste terrible. But hey, if life gives you gherkins, make pickles. It took a while to get our augurk-plant going, but during the vacation it sprouted quite a few hearty gherks. We were surprised in the beginning with the plant, because it would start to sprout small fruits but they all began to rot away and nothing materialized. But by June the plant had taken over what seemed like the entire cucumber trellis and was creeping all over the place. It started to produce properly in the last few weeks, and this is the result of 3 weeks untended growth: Vacation gherkins.

We decided to pickle them and see how they turn out. Leonie diced them and we boiled our many left over jars to sanitize them. We bought some herbs (bay leaves, pepper, dill, etc.) and made a brine of vinegar and water and sugar.

After adding the brine to the pickle jars, we boiled the entire jar for about 15 minutes each and let cool. So now we just have to wait six weeks to see if they are any good. Or garbage.

We'll see. But at least we've got pickles. 



To summarize:

-Boil your jars to sanitize them. Ensure that they can be properly sealed to create a vacuum later.
-Create a brine from half vinegar, half water, sugar, and herbs and bring this to a boil.
-Dice, slice, cube your gherkins or leave them whole. Put them in your clean pickling jars.
-Fill the jars with the brine and leave a little head-space. Put the lid on.
-Place the jars fully in a pot with boiling water and let them sit for 15-20 minutes.
-Take 'em out and let them cool.
-Wait 6 weeks.

I found this and was amused.
From: http://koolnews.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/pickles-will-kill-you/

the Huge post-vacation harvest

So. We went on vacation. And while we were enjoying the Croatian sun and warm weather, it rained for 2 weeks in Holland. It feels like autumn already here. Hopefully august will be better, because right now you can't call it much of a summer. But the vacation was great, and our garden definitely enjoyed the continuous water supply.

We have some monster courgettes and cucumbers now. Left untended they just keep growing. The greenhouse is also nicely overgrown.

Greenhouse

A small harvest of large veggies

Great-gettes

Squashling

Big ass cuke and normal cuke

Beets

The first real gherkins, plus the cukes

So now we have to think of some new ways of consuming our veggies..........

Thieves!

We accidentally caught a thief in our garden. Here's the one whose been eating all our broccoli.

Don't worry, we let him go. And now Leonie has built an extra fortified bunker of netting to protect our crops.

Tuinboontje amuse (fava bean appetizer)

We got tuinboontjes. Really big ones. Even after the serious louse infestation, we still ended up with some perfect beans.

Fava bean with Leonie

So we shelled them... Twice (the taste of the innerbean is the best). The easiest way is to boil them and then you can just squeeze out the inner bean.  

 
And cooked them for about 20 minutes. And after that baked them with garlic (from the garden, duh), onion, basil, pepper and salt. Put it in an blender....
And TADAAAA.. a tuinboontje amuse is born! It tasted good. Like an angel pissing on your tongue. (Old dutch proverb. "Alsof een engeltje op je tong piest.")

The red thing is a capsicum/bell pepper/paprika (depending on which continent you live).




Today's blog is brought to you by Leonie.   : )

Growing garlic (5): harvesting

Garlic glory! All our hard work has finally paid off. Just kidding. Garlic didn't actually require any work.

I finally pulled up all our garlic. It turned out great. It's the first time we've grown garlic and I'm pleased with the result. Tastes great, and the aroma is strong and permeating. Much more intense than store-bought garlic. In the end we had about 17 big bulbs. Considering how easy it was, we'll definitely be doing it again this winter.

 

 

We roasted a whole bulb to give it a taste. Very nice. Roasted garlic is so soft and subtle. It makes a good little snack.