I'm in a pickle...I hope!

 JENN McKINLAY: Anyone who follows me on the socials knows that this year I decided to lean all the way into gardening trowel first. Usually, I have flower pots and a sunflower patch, containers of tomatoes and peppers, and a seasonal herb garden, but this year, I went a little overboard. We now have two raised beds with sunshades and plans for two more. Mornings are spent in my pajamas, drinking my coffee and talking to my crops. 

It has been a bountiful year for zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and shishito peppers, while the eggplant and pole beans quit on me. Now it seems it's the cucumbers time to shine and I am pretty thrilled as I love me a good pickle. Of course, I've never made pickles before so I'm also a tad nervous. This is where anyone who reads this is successful with pickles give me advice in the comments!

Of course while contemplating my future pickles, I went full librarian and had to do some research on facts about pickles because...the more you know. So, here are some little tidbits that I thought I'd share.

• Pickles have been around since ancient times. Some believe the first pickle was created in Mesopotamia in 2400 B.C.E. Others believe it was as early as 2030 B.C.E.
• Ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra claimed pickles made her beautiful (although, there is some pushback on the accuracy of this tidbit).
• When the Philadelphia Eagles thrashed the Dallas Cowboys in the brutal heat of September 2000, the players attributed their win to one thing: guzzling down immense quantities of ice-cold pickle juice.
• The phrase “in a pickle” was first introduced by Shakespeare in his play, The Tempest. The quotes read, “How cam’st thou in this pickle?” and “I have been in such a pickle.”
• Sweet pickles are made by soaking dill pickles in strong Kool-Aid and are very popular in parts of Mississippi.
• You can hear the crunch of a good pickle at 10 paces.
• In Connecticut in order for a pickle to officially be considered a pickle, it must bounce. (I'm from CT and I did not know this).
• The majority of pickle factories in America ferment their pickles in outdoor vats without lids leaving them subject to insects and bird droppings! But there’s a reason. According to food scientists, the sun’s direct rays prevent yeast and molds from growing in the brine. (I don't think I needed to know this).
• Pickling vegetables not only improves their flavor, it can also make them more nutritious and easier to digest. During fermentation, bacteria produce vitamins as they digest vegetable matter.
• The Department of Agriculture estimates that the average American eats 8.5 lbs of pickles a year. (I fear I might be consuming more than my share--no regrets!).

For more info, check out:

https://www.history.com/articles/pickles-history-timeline

So, Reds and Readers, who are the pickle fans among us? What's your favorite type of pickle?

Pickle Season

The winners of the advance reader copies of THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS for Weds., Thurs. and Fri. are Deb Romano, ceblain and Reine! Please contact julia at julia spencer fleming dot com with your address.


LUCY BURDETTE: We always plant more cucumbers than we can eat but we never regret it. Why? Bread and butter pickles!

Homemade pickles are head and shoulders better than store bought. And I have a great recipe for you that I've been using for thirty years. But before deciding to embark on this project, please promise that you’ll study the section in a pickle-making book about sterilizing jars and lids, and proper use of the boiling water bath. I may be a murder mystery writer, but I don’t want to kill anyone off in real life!

The recipe I use is from an old cookbook called PUTTING FOOD BY by Hertzberg, Vaughn, and Greene. You’ll need to plan ahead for this–it’s not a last-minute kind of project. But I’ve been making these for years and never had a bad pickle. 

8-10 medium cukes, cut into 1/4 inch slices
2 large onions, sliced
peppers, if desired seeded and sliced (we had 3 banana peppers on our bushes so that’s what I used)
1/3 cup salt--Kosher is best
2 large garlic cloves, whole
ice cubes or crushed ice
4.5 cups sugar
1.5 tsp turmeric
1.5 tsp celery seed
2 TBSP mustard seed
3 cups of white vinegar

Wash the vegetables well, slice and add them to a large bowl with garlic. Sprinkle the salt over and mix thoroughly. add ice to cover and mix that in too. Then leave the bowl for 3 hours. (The salt takes the liquid from the cukes.) Drain off the liquid and remove the garlic. 

Meanwhile, in a large stainless pot, combine sugar, vinegar and spices and heat to a simmer. Stir in the veggies and simmer for ten minutes. 

Pack into hot, sterile jars, remove air bubbles, add lids and place in the boiling water bath. Process ten minutes.

More tips on processing: Boil the jars for ten minutes before filling. Place the lids in a small pan of water and bring this to almost a boil and let sit while you prepare the brine. Sterilize the funnel and whatever you're using to poke air bubbles out of the filled jars. Throw away any jar that doesn't seal, or refrigerate to eat this week.

Tell us about your favorite pickles and you'll be entered into a drawing for Julia's November release, THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS! I know that's a silly question, but you want that ARC. Your hands are a little sweaty, your lips twitch...

So, half sours? Kimchi? Gerkins? You get the picture...

Positive Procrastination

ROBERTA: I feel a little bit bad bringing this subject up when we're in the middle of our "Write First" challenge, but here goes anyway. Okay, so it's early in the day and I've got my 1000 word goal set--which shouldn't be so hard right? After all, Laura Lippman can write 2500 words a day--I saw it on Facebook. (And by the way, she's coming to visit us here next Saturday, so you can ask her yourself.) Anyway, then I decide I better check the crops in the garden before it gets too hot. And I find that the cucumber vines have gone crazy. So before I know it, I have a big batch of sweet pickles underway because the words can wait but the vegetables can't. And I don't feel entirely bad about all this, because the end product is so satisfying.

I can't afford TOO many days like this, but you have to make room for life once in a while, don't you think?

HALLIE: If only my procrastination involved pickles. I happen to have tasted your pickles. For me, the most "positive" my procrastination gets is weeds or laundry.

But don't you think the more you have to do, the more you get done? I am incredibly productive when deadlines loom; not so much when it feels like I've got all the time in the world.

RO: Very little can stop me when I want to be interrupted. It can be an owl outside my window or the certainty that a tomato plant half a football field away needs to be watered. Even now, I know I should be doing something else. Yes, we do have to stop and smell the roses but I'm not sure we always have to get dressed and take a five minute walk to get to them.

RHYS: I'm in the middle of the first phase of a book, so I'm doing five pages a day. That's about 1500 words, which is the amount that works for me. Sometimes I do more, but I'm not But I also find that I need down time to let things simmer and think things through. I wander through the garden, I throw in loads of laundry, I drive to the market in the car and all the while my subconscious is cleverly working out the next scene. So there is such a thing as positive procrastination. I think it's like being pregnant. The creation has to develop at its own pace and you can't rush it. So if you feel like smelling roses, smell them!

HANK: I don't call it procrastination. I call it--planning. Before you hoot, hear me out. My to-do list, like all of yours, I'm sure, is immense and impossible. My first thought--okay, my second thought, after: OH MY GOSH THERE IS NO WAY--is: isn't this great? Who'd have thought there would be all these wonderful things I'm supposed to do?

But of course, some of them are more fun than others. Some--are incredibly daunting and seem too hard.

So I plan. I think: I'll worry about the XYZ interview three days before it's due, but not before. So, see, that's not procrastination, that's putting it off until a specific time. Then I've imposed my own deadline. Because without a deadline, kids, I'm doing NOTHIN'.

And, like Rhys, my brain knows when it's the time to think of something. And it won't do it before that time.

ROBERTA: Ro, I think an owl would be well worth stopping for--and even watering that tomato sounds good! Rhys, love your attitude: we are all pregnant with our books even when it looks like nothing is happening! And Hank, you're the most positive of the positive:).

How about you guys--is your procrastination positive?

And by the way, if reading JRW is one of your procrastination techniques, we have four amazing women lined up this week. Alex Sokoloff will be here on Wednesday to talk about screenwriting tricks for writers. Then on Thursday, visit with life coach Jill Crossland to get her views on managing procrastination. And wowie, SJ Rozan will stop in on Friday and Laura Lippman on Saturday. And then on Sunday--time to fess up during the Jungle Red "Write First" challenge!

Follow the Writers Challenge on Twitter. Search: #Jrwritefirst