After spending the 4th with family, Brian and I decided to spend our Saturday inventorying our fridge and figuring out what we’re going to make for this week.  We get a weekly CSA share, which means our fridge is inundated with veggies and fruit, and it also forces us to be creative in our culinary endeavors.

We decided today to make pickles.  Here’s our final product.

Loads of dilly goodness!  We sterilized some mason jars we had by boiling the lids and throwing the jars into the oven (225 *F for 25 minutes).  We had about two pounds worth of cucumbers that we washed, drained, and sliced.  Meanwhile, we put 2 cups of water and 3/4 cup of vinegar on the stove to boil and added a package of dill pickle seasoning we picked up at the local Mennonite store.  After the seasoning had dissolved and the mixture came to a boil, we packed our cucumber slices in the jars and poured the hot liquid on top.

We ran out of the dill mixture, so we made some extra by just repeating the water-vinegar mixture and adding some dill, red pepper flakes, garlic, peppercorns, and salt.  We’ll see how they compare.

While we were cleaning up and starting on dinner, Loki decided he had to protect us from a visitor.  He is a big, brave dog.

It’s a good thing we have him around.  Otherwise, we’d have to protect ourselves from this monster…

Yep.  A big, bad deer.