You think making homemade sweet pickles is void of risk, pain? Think again
I’m blaming my latest set of mishaps on the COVID-19 quarantine even though everything probably would have happened even if times were normal.
With more time at home on my hands it occurred to me to try and make some of the sweet pickles my mother, bless her soul, used to make. These pickles are irresistible to me. My wife has made me several batches but I figured why bother her when I am home with all this time?
I mean, how hard could it be to boil water, make the syrup and boil it as well? I figured the tricky part might be sliced fingers when I had to cut up the cucumbers but that went fine. I ended up with a big pan of cucumber slices and all my fingers intact.
So I put the slices in a big glass jar my wife had gotten when she made them for me and boiled a large pan of water. You soak the cucumber slices in boiled water for a few days. You have to replace the water each day but how hard could that be? Anybody can boil water.
But not everyone can pour that boiling water safely. My attention deficit disorder kicked in for a fraction of a second and I bumped the pan while I was moving it. Actually the water wasn’t quite boiling hot but it had just stopped bubbling. Water sloshed onto my T-shirt which unfortunately was attached to my stomach.
My wife, the registered nurse, examined my burns and said they probably weren’t serious but they would hurt for a while. Luckily she is also a gardener and had a large aloe plant out back. Amazingly, the juice from one of its shoots took away the pain almost immediately. But my splotchy red stomach looked funny and there were some ugly looking blisters for a few days.
For the next few days I managed to not only boil water, but pour that boiling water safely.
Then it was time for the pickle juice. I mixed eight cups of sugar into vinegar and some spices and started heating it. All was going well. The mixture was starting to bubble lightly and I was just about to take it off and pour it into the jar of cucumbers when it suddenly erupted out of the pan in an amazing whooshing volcano of pickle juice.
It went nearly everywhere. It was on the stovetop, on the sink, on the floor and on the front of the oven. Somehow I managed to grab the pan and pour the juice into the jar without suffering further burns. I was just grateful I managed to save enough juice to cover the pickles in the jar.
Then I had to clean up the mess. An air cooker which normally sits on the stovetop, for lack of a better space, was coated. I moved it to clean the stovetop. After a bit I noticed smoke coming from the back of it and found that I had melted the plastic bottom. Apparently I had pushed it against the knob that controls the back stove burner and it was jostled on. On low, true, but that was enough to cause another mess.
We never used the thing anyway but it seems pretty wasteful to just burn it up. Oh well.
I had nearly destroyed the kitchen and I had three more days of boiling and moving pickle juice. It didn’t look promising.
Alls well that ends well
Needless to say, my wife was hesitant to go over to Missouri to visit our son for a few days and leave me alone. I reassured her I would manage but with my track record so far I don’t think that was too comforting. But she went and I survived without further incident.
The pickles are bottled and I am enjoying the first jar. But a few places on my stomach are still blotchy and red.
I’m entertaining suggestions for my next quarantine project, maybe something not so dangerous that doesn’t require tools or heat.
