Watermelon Pickles #1

by Mrs Marvel

Yes, we have more than one recipe for watermelon pickles. Today’s is from Auntie Fish or Tish. I have never had watermelon pickles, have you? When I turned the card over to see if there were more instructions I found another recipe for watermelon pickles, which I will post tomorrow.

Watermelon Pickles (Auntie Fish)

Peel one watermelon and cut rind in pieces

Put on to cook in boiling salted water until clear (keep cover on kettle)

Drain over night

Cook 8 c white sugar with 4 c vinegar (white), 4 tbsp whole cloves in a bag, 4 tbsp stick cinnamon

Boil syrup until it is a little thick (about 1/2 hour)

Put melon in, simmer about 20 min

Icicle Pickles

by Mrs Marvel

We continue pickle week with another of Mernie’s recipes, this time for Icicle Pickles. I particularly like this recipe because it is written on the back of a church program and I picture them talking after church with Mernie explaining the recipe, though I doubt that is how it happened. The paper was folded quite a bit and is in bad shape. With all the editors marks on it, I wonder if Gram was working on translating it for someone else.

This is a process that lasts twelve days.

UPDATE: A reader recently asked if these pickles turn blue during the pickling process. Since I have not made them myself, I ask you readers to please comment about the color of them. Thanks!!

Icicle Pickles (Mernie)

2 gallons cucumbers (cut in 4 parts)

Pour over 1 pint salt, 1 gallon boiling water. Cover tightly & let stand 1 week (keep water level over cucumbers). Drain. (They look awful. Rinse.) Throw away mushy ones.

Pour over another gallon of boiling water. Let stand 24 hours. Drain.

Pour over another gallon boiling water and 1 heaping tablespoon alum. Let stand 24 hours. Drain.

Boil together 2 1/2 quarts vinegar, 8 pounds sugar, handful pickling spices (unless in cold weather, see below). Pour over pickles. Let stand 24 hours. Drain & boil juice 15 minutes & pour over pickles. Repeat next day. The day after than you put your pickles in the jars while the syrup boils & pour boiling syrup over pickles. Can.

Cold weather

2 quarts vinegar, 6 pounds 6 oz sugar about right for 1 full peck cukes. They won’t all go into a 2 gal crock. If you weather is cold enough, you don’t lose many cukes & can use a whole recipe of vinegar.

Dill Pickles (Hot)

by Mrs Marvel

This is very similar to Mernie’s pickle recipe from yesterday but it calls for hot peppers. I assume one would use chili peppers similar to these.  Depending on the intensity of the flavor you want, you could go with a spicier hot pepper. Interesting side note about peppers – the chemicals in peppers bind to receptors in your mouth that tell your brain you have eaten something hot in temperature, which is why it actually feels hot inside your mouth and throat as you eat a hot pepper!

A curiosity about this recipe is this note “piece of alum about a walnut.” I don’t know if that means a piece of alum the size of a walnut OR a piece of aluminum foil wrapped around a walnut. This recipe may have to wait until I figure that out. The note is clearly written in after the original recipe was written down, whether it was an afterthought or Gram had to go ask Mernie about the alum, we will never know.

Finally, I have to ask my mother what size Mason jars Gram used for this type of canning. Mason jars come in a number of sizes – half pint, pint, quart, etc. My guess is she used quart or smaller, though for this recipe it would be easy to figure she used seven or eight quart size jars, since the recipe yields “seven quarts or so.”

Dill Pickles (Hot)

3 quarts water

1 quart cider vinegar

1 cup salt

Piece of alum about a walnut

Boil, 7 quarts or so of pickles

Put a garlic bud in each jar, bunch of dill top and bottom, piece of hot pepper or whole small hot pepper. Fill jars with pickles. Pour hot vinegar mixture over. Seal.

Dill Pickles

by Mrs Marvel

We are going to switch it up next with some recipes that don’t involve any baking. This week is going to be pickle week! (But don’t worry, I’m still planning the yeast post)

I love pickles, dills are my favorite! Mernie is Gram’s sister, and this recipe is from her. Alum is a pickling ingredient used to preserve the crispness in the pickles. You can buy it in many grocery or baking specialty stores, or online. If you use too much it could give a metallic taste to your food, and use too little and the food won’t be as crisp as you may like. It’s considered safe when you use potassium alum, but apparently the FDA is trying to wean American’s off their dependency on alum. I wasn’t aware it was a problem, and there will probably be an alum purchase in my future. When I make this recipe, I will definitely consult some others for an idea of how much alum to use and of course how many pickling cucumbers.

Dill Pickles (Mernie)

3 quarts water

1 quart cider vinegar

1 c salt

Alum

Boil these together

Put a garlic bud in each jar, bunch of dill. Hot pepper if desired. Place pickles in jar with dill, pepper & garlic. Seal after pouring hot vinegar over.

Delicious for a Saturday morning

by Mrs Marvel

Friday evening we made Coffee Cake #2. This recipe was very easy and turned out quite nicely.

I used Crisco shortening since I happened to have it on hand. I mixed together all the dry ingredients for the cake and then added in the egg and shortening. I didn’t cream them, but it could be done if desired. This mixture I put into an 8×8 pan. It is a very thick and sticky batter that I had some annoying moments of it sticking to my spoon I was using, having to go back and mush it down into the corners, sticking, mushing, etc.

Next I made the topping. For the topping I wound up using 5 tbsp of butter instead of 4 because I can’t count well when I’m distracted by a three year old. I rolled the graham crackers into small pieces, mixed in the cinnamon and brown sugar, then poured in the melted butter. I used a fork to work the butter through the dry ingredients. Don’t use a bowl this small. The next size up would have been better. I spread this evenly over the cake.

We had another guessing game as to temperature and time, but I went with 350 for 30 minutes again. The cake rose significantly as a result of the baking powder. When I tested the cake at 30 minutes a toothpick came out clean, but the center started to droop a bit so I put it back in for another 10 minutes. The toothpick still came out clean, but the center was more firm.

The resulting cake is not terribly sweet but the topping more than makes up for it. It is a medium texture cake, not dense and not fluffy. It was a little crumbly. What I like is that the topping isn’t so loaded with sugar that it scrapes against your teeth when you bite into it. It really does melt in your mouth. With coffee on a Saturday morning, this was divine!