The password is "pickles."

I'm a foodie. Not one of those extra special ones who gets paid to eat (Adam Richman has my dream job), just a regular gal who believes that one bite probably won't kill you and it may even taste great. I've only found a few things I don't like to eat, and I keep trying them over and over, attempting to will myself into liking them. Fried chicken livers, Lefsa, and Krebkaukers are the top three on my "no thank you" list... for now anyway.

My new favorite food is half-sour pickles. If it weren't for the water retention from the salt, and the stares and whispers from my neighbors, I'd have them delivered by the truckload. I haven't been able to find any within walking distance of our house, so I decided to go all Martha Stewart and make my own. Although, I bet she's never made pickles- she's got peeps for that. So anyway, I googled "half sour pickel recipe" (why thank you google, I did mean "half-sour pickle recipe"), and found one that looked like cheap, easy, yummy, fun.

I washed the cukes and dill, and peeled the garlic, but the kiddos did all of the assembly. It was a lot of fun for all of us. I'll let you know in three days how the pickles tasted, but the giggles, smiles, and family time was definitely some of the best I've ever had.



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Handful of very very very hard cucumbers.  (1/2 a bag full for 5L)

Fresh dill. (2 bunches for 5L)

A bunch of salt. (4 tablespoons for 5L)

Garlic cloves. (4 garlic cloves for 5L)

Water.  (1/2 a pitcher full for 5L)

1.  Wash the pickles. We used the Kirby ones

2.  Bed of Dill. Take a giant handful of dill, stems and all, and line the bottom of your container.

3.  Place cucumbers. Make one layer of cucumbers, as tight as you can.

4.  Garlic. Drop one garlic clove on top of the cucumbers. (Ok, that's what the recipe says, but I heart garlic, so we did like 3-4 cloves on each layer.)

 5.  Layer. Just keep making layers of dill, cucumbers, garlic, dill, cucumbers, garlic... Top it off with any leftover dill you have. I also added about a 1/2 cup of whole peppercorns because they're in the Claussen jars and those are my favorites.

6.  Salt the water. It needs to be really, really salty. We did about 1 1/3 cups of salt to 2 quarts of water. It doesn't need to be exact, just needs to be salty.

7.  Fill pickle container w/salt water. Keep filling the container with salt water until the water level reaches the top of your container.

8.  Wait. They need to be in the jar (unopened) for 3 days.

Thanks to www.classychaos.com for the recipe. :)