picked a peck of pickled...

How much is a peck? According to Wikipedia, a peck is an "imperial and US customary unit of dry volume, equivalent in each of these systems to 2 gallons, 8 dry quarts, or 16 dry pints. Two pecks make a kenning (obsolete), and four pecks make a bushel." I'm not sure the difference in a "dry quart" versus a wet quart or other types of quart.

But, this weekend I made roughly 16 pints of pickles. 6 half pint jars of pickle chips, 2 pint jars pickle spears, 3 quart jars pickle spears (with some extra chips thrown in), plus 2 quart jars of pickled carrots that I'm very excited to try.

For the pickles, I love dill pickles so I used a variation on this. We were out of whole peppercorns, I so used 1/2 tablespoon ground white pepper and 3/4 tablespoon ground black pepper. Plus a generous shake of cardamon seeds. And then followed the recipe, estimating on the dill per jar.

By the time I got to the carrots, I was tired. I had a large bag of local carrots and wanted to pickle them but didn't have a recipe. I google searched and found a few then improvised.

I kept the 2 1/2 cup vinegar to 5 cup water ratio, not bothering to empty out the saucepan so it still had the dregs of the pickle mix. I added 1/2 cup sugar, more ground mustard and salt (1 tbsp each.) It smelled pretty good so I'm hopeful. Washed and peeled the carrots, cut the thicker ones in half and trimmed the ends, then poured the pickling mixture over top.

I canned them all in a hot water bath, though a few tipped over so I pulled them out early and stuck them in fridge to each sooner. I'm not sad about that, since I haven't broken into most of my canning goods so it will be nice to enjoy these pickles soon. In fact, I canned them on Saturday so they are ready today- I may have some tonight!