I’ve never made pickles before, but my family loves them. So this year I planted four pickling cucumber plants. I raked in my first lot of cucumbers and took a stab at my first ever batch of dill pickles.

Apparently Paul has done some reading up on pickle making and had his own ideas of what we should do-said pickles need to have vinegar – the deli dills we buy from the grocery have vinegar – every pickle recipe he has ever seen calls for vinegar!

I did my own research, but I actually printed out a recipe, so we did things my way; dill pickles with no vinegar. Paul cut the cucumbers into spears while I boiled water to sterilize the mason jars, measured out the spices, and made the brine.

With Paul observing, I packed the cucumber spears into the jars with the spices. When the jars were all packed, I filled the jars with brine, covered the tops with cheese cloth and then put them in the cupboard as the recipe called for a cool, dark place for the fermentation process.

When I turned around, I saw an almost empty pot of water with mason jar lids sitting in the bottom. Right next to that was a full pot of the brine. Uh-ohhhhh.

I had bathed my pickles in boiled water, not brine! Paul said, “I wondered why there were lids in the bottom of the pot, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make you angry.

I rolled my eyes at him and marched back over to the cupboard. I pulled the jars out and took them to the sink where I poured the water out right through the cheese cloth, keeping the spices and pickles-to-be inside. I stripped off the cheese cloth, filled the jars up with brine and put new cheese cloth over the tops.

That was yesterday. This morning my cupboard is emitting a most lovely dill pickle smell. Monday is taste-test day. We’ll let you know how things go. If they’re not perfect, the next batch of pickles will have vinegar in them!

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