First Attempt

Today I started on two recipes that I am combining to make one.   I'm making a small batch to start.  Usually it would be 8lbs of pickles, but I'm only doing 2lbs.
So here's what I've done so far:

2lbs cucumbers for pickling from the Culver City Farmer's market.  The selection was slim but I tried to pick the greenest, bumpiest ones I could find. 

First I let those soak in an ice water bath for two hours.  While I was waiting for those to chill, I sterilized my jars and lids.  Which is easier than it sounds.  You just dunk them in boiling water, let them sit in their little jacuzzi for 10 min, then remove them and...Viola!  Sterile.

I removed the cucumbers from the water and cut off the blossom end.  On mine an easy way to tell which end was the blossom end (if the stem was already detached) I looked for the browner end.  Then I actually decided to cut both ends off and quarter them.  Game time decision.

The next step is to soak the cucumbers in a brine which is just salt dissolved in water.  I used a reduced amount of brine than both my recipes called for since I was only using a 1/4 of the cucumbers.  The concoction I came up with was 8-10 cups water and a little less than a 1/4 cup of sea salt.  Oh yeah.  I'm using coarse sea salt that has been cleaned, which so far as I can tell is exactly the same as Kosher Salt, minus the Rabbi blessing :) Not that there's anything wrong with that.  I heated the water slightly to dissolve the salt, not to a boil, just enough to help the process along.  Don't know if that was necessary or not.

As of right now I've got all those little darlings in the bottom of my giant stainless steel stock pot, in the brine with a ceramic dish (placed upside down) on top of them.  All the recipes I read said it was very important to use stainless steel or aluminum or ceramic pots because other materials (such as copper, brass or iron) can have a bad chemical reaction.  Now it's a 12 hour wait to get those puppies ready for the next step.

I'm gonna have to get up at 7 am to start the next process.  Can't say I'm looking forward to that, but the sooner I get them in the jar, the sooner I'll be eating them!