Pickles? Pickles? Warning: Not for the Faint-at-Heart!

Yesterday, we (Ben, Autumn, and myself) made pickles - dill and refrigerator. It was Autumn's idea since she's never canned anything. I had previously helped her make freezer jam, but I haven't canned anything in more than 13 years and it took me awhile to round up the canner and the rest of the apparatus, but I found everything but the canning funnel - it's on my grocery list now. We did 7 quarts of dills and we are soooo proud of ourselves! Autumn did a great job of packing those cukes into the jars.

 

Ben wanted to make some Refrigerator Pickle Medley. He'd made these when he and Adam were in 4-H and although we couldn't locate his recipe card for these, we were able to find them quickly on the Internet - don't we love the Internet!!! You chill the veggies for 3 hours on ice before packing them in a container and adding brine. 

 

The cukes for these pickles needed to be slicely thinly. I got out the Zyliss Mandoline, installed the 1.5mm blade and started slicing, but using the tube that guards important digits from the very sharp blade wasn't working very well, so I just slid the cukes across the blade with my fingers, knowing how sharp it was and how low I could go. Ben said he wanted to slice. He was going way too fast and I said "This is the kind of thing a mother just doesn't want to watch..." and didn't even get the words out of my mouth when he sliced a big chunk right out of his thumb! The chunk was clinging to the underside of the slicer! I didn't think to take a picture of it, and yes, we washed the slicer:-)

 

Then Autumn said "I'm really good at cutting myself" and took his place. One cuke, and HER fingertip was clinging to the bottom of the slicer! Even bigger chunk than Ben's! This time, I DID take a pic - and aren't you glad I did? YES THAT WHITE OVAL IS A RATHER LARGE CHUNK OF AUTUMN'S INDEX FINGER!!! Ugh.

 

Bandaids were procured. Ben wanted a SpongeBob Squarepants.



 

But those finger cuts (machete whacks?) tend to bleed a LOT, and Autumn's just woudn't quit.

 

After about a half hour, Ben said "Where's the Super Glue?" Autumn said "Does it burn? You first!" But finally after 2.5 hours of Autumn's finger bleeding, Ben made her use the Super Glue and it worked.

 

Needless to say, mom finished the slicing, and my fingers are fine, thank you very much. We also discussed whether to compost the fingertips. Or perhaps, feed them to the dogs. We finally decided to just put them down the garbage disposal ;-) It's just never dull at our house...