pickles, Pickles, PICKLES!!!

From talking with some of my friends, it's clear that this year is a good one for cucumbers!  This is my first year making pickles and I've tried a number of recipes.  I canned the batch I made today, but all the rest were "refrigerator pickles" - just put them in the fridge and they'll keep for a couple of months.

• First I tried the basic dill pickle seasoning from Ball.  It was very good.  Using a seasoning packet makes things easier - all you do is boil water and vinegar, add the seasoning, and pour into your jars of cucumbers.
• I made a Sweet Garlic Dill recipe from The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving.  Honestly, I don't know why I made this one!  We don't like sweet pickles.  I guess I thought the garlic and dill would overpower the sweet, but they still tasted too much like bread and butter pickles to me. (blech!) Luckily, I found out that my neighbor loves sweet pickles so I gave her a couple of jars ... and then I made her a huge batch with cucumbers she had been given by another neighbor, so her sweet pickle craving has been fed!)  Making pickles from scratch as in this recipe is a bit more work but really quite simple.  You just have to measure out all of the individual spices.
• Next I tried a recipe from the same book called Favorite Dill Pickles.  This one is awesome!  These taste like authentic deli pickles.  When we first tried them (about a week after I made them) they were still a little bit sharp from the vinegar, but a couple of weeks later they are perfect!  Definitely worth the wait.
• Finally I tried another seasonings packet by a brand called Mrs. Wages.  It had gotten great reviews from a few websites, but honestly, we thought the Ball seasoning packet was better. 

This afternoon I made another batch of the Favorite Dill Pickles, plus a batch of Tangy Dill Pickle Relish.  Usually I don't like relish because it is too sweet, but this recipe uses lots of dill and garlic and is very good.  I can't wait to try some at our next barbeque!

Making these recipes was cool because not only were the cucumbers home-grown, so were the onions and the dill!