Snail Spirals

I did a little canning this fall, though not as much as I would have liked.  Shockingly, I didn't make a bit of jam.  Since I still have an adequate (roughly, oh, five year?) supply of jam in the pantry, I think we'll survive.  However, since I bought ten pounds of cucumbers at the last Farmer's Market, I did make pickles!

This is seven quarts of cucumber dill slices.  I got this bug in my brain that I wanted crinkle-cut slices for these pickles, and bought a mandoline.  I've wanted one for years, and finally just went ahead and got one, already.  Plus, the mandoline makes quick work of thin-sliced potatoes, which I hate doing.

When I made the sliced pickles, I kept back the smallest cukes and used them to make two quarts of whole baby dills.  And finally, as an experiment, I made three quarts and two pints of zucchini dill spears and chunks, out of an absolutely enormous zucchini that a friend gave me.  All those zucchini pickles are from one zuccini.

I tucked all these pickles away in the pantry for a month to let them ripen and cure.  Emma and I cracked open one of the jars of the whole cucumber pickles today, and YUM!   Crunchy and fantastic!  Can't wait to try the rest!