When it's hot your not

Bernie Konter's Fall Feast Pickles

Wow, this hot weather seems never ending.  This is the time I am fishing the Mississippi River behind the house however the place where I usually launch the jon boat is just too shallow.  I'd love to launch at the Champlin landing and head upstream but I need to fix the lights on the trailer.....another thing on my list! The dry weather hasn't done my garden very well however the cucumbers have been coming in like crazy.  Actually it seems like they are almost done already, even though they are watered frequently, the plants look quite yellow.  Either way it's been a scramble to get something done with the cucumbers that are ready to go.  Every year I make 10 - 20 gallons of Bernie Konter's Fall Feast Pickles.  They are a refrigerator pickle made famous by a dear and deceased friend by the name of Bernie Konter.  He used to make these for the St. Peter and Paul Fall Festival which is coming up this weekend, with buckets of pickles all over the place.  His original recipe called out adding sugar, however I'm not a great fan of that so I just use the same recipe without the sugar.  Slice medium sized cucumbers in a 1 gallon pale adding fresh dill, sliced sweet onions, and fresh garlic.  Once the pail is full you take 8 cups of water (I used store bought water), 1 cup of white vinegar, and 1/2 cup of canning salt.  Add a tablespoon or 2 of pickling spice then pour over the cucumbers.  Put a cover on them and set in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks, they are absolutely delicious. Bernie passed away a number of years ago however I enjoy carrying on the legend for sure.  If you search this blog you will find a number of posts mentioning him, he was a great guy.  Anyway if you are around stop by and I will serve you some, they are truly delicious.  

Crock Pickles

I also have gotten into making fermented pickles.  They are basically done the same way sauerkraut is made, simply put cucumbers in a pickling crock, add a given amount of salt per cup of water, cover the cucumbers with the brine, of course I add pickling spice and dill to the brine.  Usually fermentation crocks have flat ceramic stones to help keep the cucumbers completely immersed in the brine.  The crock has a cover to keep out the bad things and in 3 to 4 weeks one has some of the most delicious tasting dill pickles you have ever tasted.  This is really the old fashioned way that pickles were made as they can stay in the brine for a long time and still be good.  Because it's been too warm in the pole shed for the proper fermentation, I have been keeping these in my Salem Ice Cabin for safe keeping.  I am figuring about 2 more weeks before they are done.  Speaking of my Salem, when we returned last March from Lake of the Woods ice fishing I noticed that my front frame on the Salem was rusted through.  Being nervous about this I have an appointment with Crystal Welding on September 14 to see if it can be repaired.  I really like my current wheel house and am hoping it can be fixed, certainly a lot cheaper than buying a new one!  I guess time will tell for sure.  In a previous post I talked about the new LiFePo batteries for my boat.  Forgetting to shut off the main battery switch, during this heat the parasitic currents fully discharged the battery.  In the meantime we got new phones on the 3rd of July.  The new Ionic battery app downloaded however when I tried to look I only seen 3 batteries, not 4.  Reading that there might be some issues with the new app I just sort of brushed it off.  Well after deciding to look into it, it was apparent something was quite wrong.  After investigating and recharging the suspect battery, now they all show up on the app and everything looks good.  I am still not convinced about a few things but I have time to think about it.  Everything is back to normal.  Canada is opening August 9th and Bruce is preparing for a possible trip in the middle of September, we'll see.  In the meantime I am installing Lowrance's new Active Target into the boat, it is a challenge but I think we can get it done.  It should be the ticket for locating walleyes in Canada as it is often we don't have to move very far and we are on to them. maybe this will help.