In which I learn much about pickling asparagus.

First, I must give a huge shoutout to Agriberry! Not only do they have fabulous strawberries right now (and other luscious berries soon to come, in addition to the best peaches around come summer, and hands-down the most amazing Honeycrisp apples in the fall) Anne (the owner) hooked me up with a couple of pounds of the best asparagus to be found anywhere. And I mean anywhere. Not just Richmond, or Virginia. Seriously, I wait all year for the Agriberry asparagus, and when it arrives at my local farmers market (and really, I go to every market on a rotating basis.... share the love!!) I buy pounds and pounds of it and eat it daily. Sometimes twice a day. So I was sad when their season was ending and I still hadn't gotten any to pickle. Luckily I ran into Anne at a midweek market, and she said she'd try to save a couple of pounds for me to pick up today. Like the fabulous farmer-lady she is, she came through, and I joyously bought several pounds of her asparagus today, when no one else in Richmond, no matter which market they were at (Agriberry is at just about every local Saturday market) was able to buy some. One more reason to know your farmers, kids!

One more big thank you goes to Mr. Leonard's Sharpening Service, who is at the St. Stephens Saturday market every other weekend. He did a killer job sharpening my chef's knife and my paring knife. Sharp knives are things of beauty in the kitchen! What a great idea to have a knife sharpener at a farmers market!

So, to the asparagus! I went with a pretty classic recipe, not dilly, not overly herby, with a little kick and some interesting flavors I think will be subtle and delicious.... I happily set about washing my lovely long spears.

I specifically chose the 12 oz jelly jars since they are tall and skinny. They seemed perfect for asparagus, and the recipe I chose concurred. So after washing my asparagus, I trimmed it down to fit the jars. This was the result:

I was a bit surprised at how little I was left with to pickle, when I had this much "refuse" left over:

 So since there were some super long stems in there, and I only had 4 jars of tips packed, I did a jar of stems... I figured we can taste those for flavor, since Agriberry asparagus stems are just as yummy as the tips! After adding my secret spices, here's what I had:

That's five sterilized 12 ounce jelly jars, which I then topped with sterilized lids, and processed in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. The result:

 Some stray observations:

• In my initial research, there seems to be a lot of debate about packing your jars tips-up or tips-down. I packed mine tips up because I thought they'd look nicer, though I had to be a little more gentle with them.

• Next time I'll choose shorter asparagus. I thought it would matter if they were straighter, but the curvy ones packed just as easy. No big thang.

• Will thick stems matter versus thin stems? We'll have to see when we taste them!

• One of my secret ingredients was chunks of freshly smashed nutmeg. Someone please tell me what to do with the rest of this nutmeg!

• These will be ready to taste in three weeks, right when we can taste the pickled garlic scapes! Anyone wanna have a pickle picnic with me? I have some leftover pickles from last season that need to be eaten! Beets, romanesco, eggplant, bread and butter zucchini, cauliflower, pears, and watermelon rind. Sounds like a party! Wooooo!

Garlic Scapes!

As I type this, I hear my jars popping in the other room, and to me, there's nothing more satisfying after a hot steamy canning session as hearing your jars pop. The sound of a job well done.


So all spring I'd been planning on doing asparagus as my first pickling entry, but I wasn't terribly jazzed about it. Don't get me wrong, I love asparagus. But it's so awesomely good as is, unpickled... just grilled or roasted or sauteed, it didn't seem like a very exciting way to kick off my pickling adventures.


And then I met the mythical garlic scapes. I first met them at my Thursday farmer's market, fascinated I bought a bunch. Sauteed with some olive oil and kale, they were fantastic! Then I got the facebook update that Frog Bottom Farm would be bringing a whole mess of them to the Farmer's Market at St. Stephen's today, and they linked to a blog about garlic scapes, in which there was a brief mention of pickling them.... and immediately I knew what my first pickling experiment would be! Check it out:

2 pounds of Garlic Scapes! How awesome is that?! I was just too excited. Talked to the awesome chick who had just picked them yesterday (sorry I forgot her name!) She was way cool.


Another cool thing is my mom scored this awesome pressure canner on freecycle:

It even had the original owners manual/recipe book with it!

I didn't need the pressure canning capabilities, obviously, but it was great to have a huge canner to replace my significantly smaller one I used last season. I fit five pints and 4 half pints in there! She's letting me test drive it for her, isn't that nice of her? Thanks, mom!


So I'm not giving away my secret recipe... but in a month you're all welcome to taste them with me! I'm not making these to keep, I'm making them to share with anyone who wants to taste them and give me feedback! The goal is to end up with the most fabulous pickling recipes, so that in a year or so, JillPickles can take over the world with the most amazing artisan pickles ever. You shall all be my guinea pigs!


The end result of today's labor:
5 pints and 4 half pints:

Hit me up after June 14th if you want to taste some! I may even be convinced to open a jar early if enough of you guys going on the rafting trip want me to bring one...

Welcome to JillPickles!

So my big plan, back in January, was to do all the html myself, on my own domain and everything... yeah, I'm just not that ambitious. I'd rather spend my time thinking about pickling. I did manage to get one post up, back on January 15th. Then I came to two realizations. One was that the coding was way over my head and I wasn't interested in learning enough to make it work like I wanted it to. The second was that it was the middle of winter, and all the fresh local produce I was dreaming of pickling was months away! And so the blog faltered. Here's a copy of my first posting, full of hope and wonder:

And so it begins. So many pickles to explore, so many techniques, so many fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, meats, fish... I’m looking ahead to the seasons, planning my journey. Pickles have long sustained humankind, and I am going to carry on and expand on that history. They don’t simply have to be a means of preserving the harvest. They can be an amazing culinary experience. I can’t wait to get started!


Now farm market season is here and I have a bounty of fresh veggies to choose from! I picked up something special today, that I can't wait to share with you! What could it be....? You'll just have to wait and see!