Lady Ashburnham Pickles

For years, my husband talked about the Lady Ashburnham pickles that his mother used to make. Anytime he went to New Brunswick to visit (a 12-hour drive), he requested some to take home with him. I had never heard of them before, but a quick google search will tell you that they are pretty common on the east coast (of Canada and the U.S.) and the idea is pretty standard: basically, it's a sweet relish, yellow in colour.

Once my husband started his low-sodium diet, one of the many things he gave up was pickles.

Finally, last summer, I decided I would try to make a salt-free version for him. We had bought a pressure-cooker/canner, and our neighbour gave us a bunch of cucumbers from her garden, so I called my mother-in-law to ask for her recipe.

Here it is (thanks, Nancy!), minus the salt:

8-10 large cucumbers, peeled and seeded
4 cups chopped onion (I used white sweet onion)
Finely diced red pepper ("for colour," according to Nancy)
2 cups vinegar
2 cups sugar
3 tbsp. flour
1 tbsp. dry mustard
1 tbsp. turmeric
1 tsp. mustard seed
1 tsp. celery seed

Cut cucumbers into relish-sized pieces.
Let sit overnight, then drain (This is where the salt is supposed to be added; I didn't, and so there wasn't much to drain. My theory is that the salt would have pulled more moisture out; I could be wrong. Maybe I just had drier cucumbers. Either way, my batch turned out and got my husband's stamp of approval, and so did my second batch).
Combine all ingredients in large stock pot.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for at least an hour (I simmered longer, until more of the liquid had evaporated).
Can while still hot, using your canner's instructions.

Here's the canned product:

Lady Ashburnham pickles

Not bad for a Saturday night's work!
Note that I used two different sizes of mason jar. That's all that I had, and I was doing this (as with most serious cooking/baking these days) after Atticus was in bed, and after Canadian Tire (my go-to Mason jar location) had closed.

My husband went through the jars remarkably quickly, eating it with pretty much any kind of meat, and on potatoes. He thinks of it as a side dish, while I regard it as a condiment. Either way, it's pretty delicious, if I do say so myself. And he claims you don't notice the lack of salt.

Mary Mary, Quite Contrary...

How does your garden grow...?

Finally, after two years of no garden (during which we moved and had a baby -- legitimate excuses), we've got our little vegetable patch up and running again!

This time, my husband built a raised garden bed -- far more elaborate than I had anticipated, but beautiful. And before you ask, we did not use pressure-treated lumber. It's pine (I think), and my husband put some stain on it. He does, however, want to stain it darker eventually so that it matches our deck and privacy fence.

Thanks to the generosity of our neighbours (well, really they just ordered way too much and were only too happy to have my husband cart it away) and the sweat of my husband, it's filled with compost. A LOT of compost. It took him 12 wheelbarrow trips, and each wheelbarrow load can hold about 80L, plus we added a few more bags of soil on top. That's a lot of dirt! My hope is that it will make for a fertile environment for our plants.

Here's day 1 (May 25):

The "big" garden

This is the "big" garden...
While it's nothing compared to our neighbours', which is enormous (by city standards), it's large enough for what I can handle this year, especially with a 13-month-old running around!

Tomatoes in foreground, cucumbers at the other end;
Atticus' stroller in the background -- he was "helping"

This year's crop includes
- tomatoes (Beefsteak, Roma, and "Husky Red")
- cucumbers (slicing)
- carrots (Red Cored Danvers)
- onions (Yellow Spanish sweet and green bunching)
- lettuce (Prizehead and Romaine)
- spinach
- peppers (Red Beauty, Hungarian Wax Yellow, and California Wonder sweet green) 

I'm comparing to our neighbour again, but she was laughing at our "instant garden." Obviously we bought some plants -- the tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow onions, and peppers. The carrots, spinach, lettuce, and green onions are from seeds. Actually, the green onions are "seed tape" which I've never used before, but seems fairly straightforward. I guess we'll see!

In total, we spent about $40.00 on plants and seeds at our local Canadian Tire. The onion, pepper, and some of the tomato plants cost only $.99 for four, and the large tomato plants were $4.99 each.

We'll see what our yield is like, but I'm hoping to be able to can some tomatoes by the end of the summer and make pickles from our cucumbers. I might research pickling some peppers as well (at least for the hot ones), but I'm not sure how they'll turn out, considering I don't use any salt (see my Low-Sodium Recipes).

 

Planter boxes with peppers and (hopefully soon!) green onions

Last summer our crops were entirely contained in these two cedar planter boxes. We had plum tomatoes in the larger one, and peppers in the smaller one (pictured in the bottom corner -- nothing to show yet as we just planted seeds for green onions). We got quite a few tomatoes, despite my concerns about the plants not having enough room to grow. The pepper plants that my husband bought turned out to be hot peppers. Or at least some were. We could never figure out which ones were hot or not until we ate them (or cooked with them). This year, I was more involved with the plant-purchasing, so we definitely know which are hot and which are sweet.

I've been watering twice a day with water from our rain barrel, and tonight my husband added some compost from our vermin composter (yes, worms in the house, but contained within a plastic bin) to the watering can. It made watering a bit less pleasant, since I had to be VERY careful not to spill compost-water on myself (especially my fun, summery shoes, the toe of which you can see in the last photo). Hopefully it will be worth the effort, and I'll have updates to post by this weekend.

Stay tuned...!