Quarantine Cooking & Celebrating: Pickling and How I Do Birthday Presents

Hubs ran out of homemade spicy dill pickles, and so I decided to replenish the pantry. And to put together a birthday schwag bag for my friend, Meral. Her sister, Felice had given a bunch of beautiful and fragrant basil, which I incorporated into shrimp rolls to give the birthday girl.

I love the seasons of spring and summer for all the sunlight that shines into my kitchen, and because of the pandemic I got to revel in all the gorgeous morning and afternoon light. I so enjoy fresh herbs in the kitchen.

After I made the shrimp spring rolls and lunch, I got to pickling. I hadn't bought prepackaged pickling spice, but I knew I had the ingredients including the ginger which I pulled from the freezer and grated into the bowl.

I think I've had this canner for over a decade and wish I had never gotten rid of the old canner I had in my 20s or maybe I left that canner at the ex-boyfriend's home?

Luckily, cucumbers are in season from local farms and are therefore plentiful and inexpensive in the grocery store even though the cucumbers in our garden aren't ready for harvest.

I also luckily bought plentifully available jalapenos from Trader Joe's to spice the pickles along with the red onions and garlic from our garden plot.

These cucumbers are more thin skinned than Kirby cucumbers, and they are very much like Persian cucumbers; heck, maybe they are Persian cucumbers.

Because the hubs pickles so much, we've always warehouse quantities of kosher salt and white vinegar on hand.

Hubs normally cuts his thick skinned and seeded cucumbers into spears, but these cucumbers were little enough to keep whole.

My favorite produce stores sells lots of herbs in huge bunches like this dill, which I'll also be turning into farmer's garden dressing.

Both me and the hubs like our pickles super crunchy, so we try not to over-process the cucumbers to keep their crunch. I also sliced the red onion into thick slices, hoping they'll retain some crunch as well.

I let the big quart jars simmer while I prepared the pint jars for pickles.

Because the hubs pickles so much, we also always seem to have lots of jars on hand too.

These little cucumbers are perfectly sized for pint jars.

Hubs was very pleased that I produced 7 jars of pickles.

What I also love about the pickling process is the sound of the metal lids making that popping noise as the jars of pickles become vacuum sealed. I then got to putting together a birthday bag for Meral. I bought a dowel rod and used some jute twine from a garland of garlic to make a hanger for a sashiko wall quilt I had stitched this past year.

I also dug through my greeting card stash to find the most appropriate birthday card for Meral. Yup, my demographic self would love this card.

I had soaked garbanzo beans the night before and they'd been simmering on the stove next to the pickles processing. Baking .soda is the key to a creamy hummus, and I find it very satisfying to pick out and skim off the skins from the chickpeas

I constantly play with the flavors of my hummus and put into this batch: aleppo pepper, hot smoked paprika, cumin, ground coriander, and of course, garlic, lemon juice, tahini and olive oil.

Yep, creamy hummus because I skimmed off all those skins.

Into a container goes the hummus along with shatta, more sprinkles of aleppo pepper and paprika, and drizzles of olive oil. That and a bag of pita chips. Perfect snack if you ask me for her wait in the airport and her flight to Idaho.

I included with the spring shrimp rolls spicy peanut sauce which I put into a ceramic pourer thrown and glazed by our friend, Patsy. I also included a bundle of Chinese wheat noodles to sop up the rest of the peanut sauce after the shrimp rolls are gone. And two yellow squashes harvested the day before from our garden.

I got this cute tote bag with my subscription to Bon Appetit which will match up with the cute tote bag of blue and turquoise waves that I got with my subscription to New Yorker, which I also gave earlier to Meral a year ago.

Lastly, I wrapped up the wall quilt in blue tissue paper and put it in the tote bag. I think Meral liked her gift because she sent me a pic of herself in eye shadow and standing in front of the wall quilt which she hung on her wall.