The Suburban Herbivore

Greetings fellow Suburbivores! Jason here, Ryn’s husband and the official Suburban Herbivore taste tester. (What can I say? I’m a lucky man!) It’s summer, which means, among other things, cucumbers. And cucumbers, of course, mean pickles! I thought I would share my recipe for spicy, garlicky, Icebox Pickles. These pickles are super easy to make (I’ve already made three batches since we started getting cukes from our CSA), and will last months as long as they stay refrigerated. For a something milder, you could reduce the amount of garlic and red pepper, but really, why would you want to do that?

Ingredients

2 largish cucumbers, cut into spears

6 cloves of garlic, crushed + 2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 ½ teaspoon salt

1 cup white wine vinegar

1 cup water

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Place cucumbers and crushed garlic in a bowl or large jar. In a non-aluminum saucepan, combine the minced garlic, salt, vinegar, water, sugar, and red pepper. Bring just to a boil. Remove from heat and pour over the cucumbers. Cool to room temperature. Transfer to smaller jars (or just use the one big one), and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

We canceled our share for last week, as our friends that are splitting it with us were out of town. And this week’s share was fairly light. But I’m requesting a double one next week to make up for the one we missed, so that will be … something. For sure.

Last week we missed out on potatoes, of which there will be more, and red cabbage, which I am happy to be done with. Though I did turn up a fairly decent recipe for coleslaw online recently.

Anyway, we got a cute little watermelon, six tomatoes (!) and more lemon cucumbers, as well as leeks, regular cucumbers, serrano peppers, garlic, and the first of the eggplant. Elysian Fields grows Japanese eggplant, which are smaller, more tender, and not as bitter as the standard Black Beauty eggplant that one typically finds in a grocery store. I really appreciate them, because (1) I just don’t like eggplant that much, so having them be smaller is better, as far as I’m concerned, and (2) they are better for Asian/Indian cooking, which I’m more inclined to do anyway.

In rereading this post, I realized that I keep complaining about the vegetables I don’t like. To counter-balance, let me mention all the ones we got this week that I love: serranos, garlic, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I also love watermelon, which is of course not a vegetable. I don’t actually believe there are any fruits that I don’t like.

I am planning to do a flurry of posts this weekend, including reviews of the two Moosewood cooking classes I attended, and a guest post by my husband about making pickles. Stay tuned…