All Hallow's Eve by Lauren Moser

Our youngest daughter, Lauren, writes at least one poem a week for her friends at the Multnomah County Courthouse where she works. This one is particularly timely. We're hoping that if her law career doesn't pay off, she may be the next Shel Silverstein!

Hear this warning, one and all,

We have entered middle fall,

That wicked, dangerous time of year,

When blood will curdle from the fear,

Of ghoulies, ghosties, things that crawl,

Things that slither or cast a pall,

Over groups, when you're alone,

There is no safety, even at home.

Shut the door, turn on the lights,

Make sure to stay awake all night.

Tomorrow is All Hallow's Eve,

A night of revelry and evil deeds.

There is no haven in the woods,

Nor in your local neighborhoods.

Some have tried a local church,

But that is where the devils search.

Perhaps you'll go to a cemetery,

But the dead may rise - I wouldn't tarry.

I would share with you my hiding place,

No. It must stay secret, it must stay safe.

I say to you "Good luck on Halloween,"

Whether you survive remains to be seen.

An Entertaining Weekend in So Cal

We’ve spent much of the last month living out of our suitcases with trips to Missouri, Portland, and this past weekend, Southern California.  It’s always easy for us to set a date and plan a trip, but as the time nears we often regret making the commitment as we’re both basically homebodies. Not that we don’t enjoy ourselves when we’re spending time with family in each of these areas, but our favorite place is right here in Volcano living on the prettiest 40 acres in Amador County. It just doesn’t get any better than this!

Well, daughters and grandchildren were looking forward to our visit so we made the trip and had a great time despite ourselves. Our first stop was Santa Monica to have dinner with Jana on Friday night. We met at Penzey’s, just a short walk from the restaurant, and had fun buying a few new spices, including three different curry powders. The restaurant, Mercado’s, was one Jana took us to on a previous visit and was my choice this time, rather than Musha’s, where we normally dine on our first night in town. Why did I choose Mercado? Because (1) the food is amazing and (2) I wanted one of their signature cucumber margaritas that I foolishly didn’t try when we were last there. We try to experiment with new restaurants and food with each visit, but some are just too good to not repeat and this was one with its very contemporary take on Mexican food. For example, Tacos de Papa (rajas mashed potatoes, cabbage, crema fresca, queso fresco, arbol salsa…simply put, mashed potato tacos). They were delicious! We’d made dinner reservations, but arrived early and after trying a half-dozen small plate items from the Happy Hour menu as well as the best flan I’ve ever eaten, we were stuffed and cancelled our later reservation. It was still early, so we walked around downtown Santa Monica and browsed in the shops that were still open. I have to admit, I’m quick to “So Cal Bash” and feel I have a legitimate basis for it having previously lived in Orange County for over twenty years, but Santa Monica is really beginning to grow on me. It’s so unlike anything I ever experienced in the more inland counties.

Jana and her Best Daddy Ever…

We spent Saturday a little further south in the San Bernardino County area at Raelin and Aaron’s home.  We often get together at a kid-friendly restaurant, like the Spaghetti Factory, when we visit. It’s fun, but a noisy restaurant is not always conducive to visiting. Being slightly (Verne would scoff and call this a gross understatement) hearing-impaired, I find that I hear a fraction of the conversation and only what is immediately spoken around me. Visiting at Raelin and Aaron’s house this time instead was perfect for all of us. Quiet, by comparison to a restaurant, home-cooked Good Eats (slow-cooked pulled pork), beautiful weather for outdoor seating, and plenty of space for three little energetic boys to romp and play until they were exhausted. It was fun seeing them in their own environment. Sam, the oldest, entertained us with his hula hoop tricks and Jana and a few other adults gave it a try. It brought back memories of when I was 10-years old and enjoyed my first hula hoop spending hours mastering the tricks, like bringing it up from the waist over the arms and around the neck. Sam’s hoops were weighted, adding a new challenge. Kendall, 14-years old and our only granddaughter, joined the fun and entertained us with her Colorguard routine. A freshman in high school, this is her first year in Colorguard, but is already very good with her flag. As the saying goes, pictures are worth a thousand words, so I’m going to include several rather than droning on and on and on...

Most of the gang…

Jana mastering the hula hoop…

Kendall and a partial routine…

A Day in Court and a New Favorite Portland Eatery

It’s officially Autumn! This is my favorite time of year with cool, crisp mornings and mildly warm days. The trees are beginning to turn and the deck is already lightly scattered with yellow leaves. It’s about time to break out the winter clothes and boots, put away the canning paraphernalia, think about heavier, slow-cooked meals (like beef bourguignon), and make plans for the holidays.

We returned from our trip to Missouri and were home just long enough to do laundry and repack our suitcases for a trip to Portland. This was our fourth year attending the Northwest Quilt Expo and it was as inspirational as ever. My Santa Barbara quilting friends, Sally and Sandy, flew up for the show and, of course, a little fabric shopping at two of our favorite shops. However, the inventory was marginal compared to last year’s truckload sale and the discounts weren’t exceptional. Although disappointed, they still managed to fill a couple of suitcases with their purchases.

The day before our company arrived we visited Lauren’s work at the Multnomah County Courthouse in downtown Portland. I have to say this was the highlight of our trip. We have been hearing stories about the Courthouse and Judge Bloch and Joanne, the judicial assistant, for almost two years now. Our trips to Portland are always packed with lots to do and we’ve never found time (actually, we’ve never taken time) to visit her work and meet her work family. We arrived at the Courthouse just before lunch and started our tour by going through visitor’s security. I was carrying my purse that was crammed with all kinds of extraneous stuff (you know how it is when you travel) and it must have taken five inspections of my bag and twenty minutes to get the go-ahead. A bit embarrassing as the guard scanned my belongings for explosives and other contraband, but I am comforted that they’re so careful. After all, my baby spends a good portion of her life there and sometimes encounters some pretty unsavory characters.

We toured the first floor and then gradually made our way upstairs to the fifth floor where she works. Judge Bloch and Joanne were there to greet us, all of us happy to make each others acquaintance. I’m sure they’ve heard as many stories as we have and were curious about their clerk’s parents. Lauren took us into the jury room (where she sometimes has her lunch), through the judge’s chambers, and into the courtroom, where her desk sits directly below the judges’ bench. Unless court is in session, she has the room to herself to read and research, write memos and opinions, and on a slow day, call her mommy or chat with friends she’s made in the courthouse. It was a great experience.

Lauren planned lunch for us at a Courthouse-favorite downtown restaurant, The Picnic House (www.picnichousepdx.com). We decided to drive even though she said it was only four or five blocks. She walks all over Portland and her estimates are sometimes a bit skewed. The last “short walk” with her must have been a good mile, so she’s proven herself to be untrustworthy. Her choice of restaurants couldn’t have been better, though. It’s our new favorite! We’d give it four stars or forks or whatever ranks it among the best. The food was outstanding (I had a curry pumpkin soup that was incredible), the décor and ambience charming, and the service couldn’t have been better. I can’t wait to go back.

We love Portland. To think Lauren could have gone to law school in Florida…it makes me shudder. Attending Lewis and Clark and then remaining in Oregon to work was one of her better decisions. It has especially been good for us, because we get to visit her several times a year, experience all that makes Portland wonderful (and weird), and then return to sunny California and all of its goodness. The best of both worlds!

P.S. We stopped by the Portland Police Department hoping to see Nick Burkhardt, detective and local Grimm, but he was out chasing Wesen. Hopefully, next time.

Family Historian

Genealogy has never held any interest for me. Not even a little bit. Today, however, I hold a new title, Family Historian, and am responsible for the completion of the search for our ancestors that was started several years ago by my niece, Leanne. We just returned from a trip to visit her in Eldon, Missouri. Loving all things having to do with history, Leanne started this project several years ago and has one family line traced back to the 1600’s. She’s filled several binders with her research notes and findings. About 18 months ago, Leanne’s work on the genealogy project as well as her continuing education at a local college came to an abrupt halt when she was informed that she had breast cancer. After months of chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, the cancer has spread to her liver. Despite her weakened condition and constant pain, Leanne has bravely used the last few months to put pictures in albums for her three children and frame keepsakes she’s preserved over the last thirty years. If you’ve read my quilting blog, www.stixchix-stix.blogspot.com, then you’re familiar with the quilting blocks Leanne sent to me that were made by my grandmother on my father’s side, Grandma Wier. She saved these blocks and another quilt top from the trash bin years ago with intentions to complete them at some point. I’ve spent the last few weeks finishing the first quilt, shown below with the recipient, Leanne’s 12-year daughter Emma, and have returned from our trip with a second beautiful example of Grandma’s handwork that I plan to quilt in the next few months.

While I’ve never really been interested in old quilts, I have to admit working with my grandmother’s quilt blocks sparked an interest in me. Not so much about old quilts, but about the person who spent hours each day foregoing housework to sit with her cats and crochet, embroider, or hand appliqué her quilt blocks and then even more time assembling the blocks and hand-quilting her final creation. I’ve been told more than once that she was a terrible housekeeper. I say: who cares? The woman had her priorities straight! She lives on through these quilts and crocheted bedspreads. For the first time in my life, I feel a connection to this person who was long dead when I was born. 

While in Eldon we stayed with Leanne’s in-laws in their beautiful farmhouse in the heart of Amish (actually, Mennonite) country. My sister (and Leanne’s mother) Judy had been staying in Leanne’s home, but joined us there at night along with my other sister, Jane, who drove up from her home in Arkansas to spend the weekend with the family. We’ve made trips to this area before and have memorable experiences driving through the Lake of the Ozarks and actually visiting an Amish home where quilts were made and sold and then corresponding with the owner, Vera, for several years after. It’s like a step back in time to see the women with bonnets and wearing long dresses riding bikes or driving horse-pulled buggies with young replicas of themselves sitting in the back. The weather was beautiful during our visit, but all thoughts of living in Missouri (just joking) were dashed by the stories told of ice storms that stripped trees of their branches, mosquitoes, and cesspools.

We’re home for a couple of days and then off to Portland for another adventure at the annual Northwest Quilting Expo. This will be our fourth year attending the event, which has become a family and friends tradition.

  

Fun Fermenting

I love kitchen stuff. I’m like a kid (and some adults) with a comic book when the William Sonoma, Sur la Table, or Chef’s Catalogs arrive. I browse them over and over, dog-earing pages of interesting new kitchen equipment and gadgets. Just writing this reminded me of one of my favorite new tools that Lauren gave me for Mother’s Day. I hadn’t planned to talk about it, but I’m so excited about it and this is the perfect forum. It’s called a Kuhn Rikon Smart Lid. The lid snugly fits both our 10” and 12” fry pans, but also may be used with smaller pans; it's clear on top so you can see what’s happening in the pan and it has a venting system that allows you to let the steam escape or it may be closed tight keeping moisture in. It’s a bit expensive at $30, but well worth the price. Check it out.

Okay, back to the point of this story. During my MFP training, we learned about fermenting and made sauerkraut as an example of that technique. It was incredibly easy and turned out well. It was while I was eating the sauerkraut at our graduation dinner that a fellow-MFPer told me she’d bought her father a fermenting system from a store on Etsy. He hadn’t used it yet, but the design she described sounded interesting. I wasted no time and ordered a starter kit from the shop, Primal Kitchen. The starter kit included a glass crock with a special lid (Kraut Kap) with a hole in the middle and an airlock device that securely fits into the silicone seal surrounding the hole. The design is unique, because it allows the carbon dioxide to escape, while not allowing oxygen to enter the system (or anything else while it sits in a closet for over a month fermenting). Also included in the kit was a crock rock Mason jar weight, which keeps the kraut submerged in brine. It sounded good and looked impressive and I ordered it. We started our first batch in August and not being able to wait any longer, we ate it this past weekend. This story isn’t really about the recipe we used, but this is a perfect time to share it, so I’ll digress again. 

This is a recipe a friend shared with us and includes our changes. Place a quart of sauerkraut in a Dutch oven. Top it with a layer of sliced onions (I can’t stand partially cooked onions, so we lightly caramelized them). Next, add a layer of sliced apple that has been cored and peeled and a layer of sliced potatoes (Yukon Gold are my favs). Finally, top with a couple of fresh sausages (for example, Apple Sausage from Lockeford). Pour over these stacked ingredients about 4 ounces of beer or white wine and cook on the stove top for about 35 minutes or until done. At the end of the cooking time, remove the sausages and either quickly brown them in a frying pan or grill pan. Serve. It’s an easy one-pot meal and very tasty. The sauerkraut was the star and it didn’t disappoint.

Back to the fermenting jar. Our results were perfect. Never had a problem with loss of brine, slime, or scum and no bad smells in our pantry where it resides; all problems that can occur when making sauerkraut. We spent no more than 30 minutes total preparing the cabbage for the fermenting process. That’s it.  After that we just checked it weekly to make sure the cabbage remained submerged. The closed system seemed to keep the brine from evaporating and the level actually increased slightly at first and then remained constant. It couldn’t be simpler.

What’s the point of fermenting? Aside from the incredibly beneficial bacteria created, lactobacillus, I find the process absolutely fascinating. To think that two ingredients, cabbage and salt…

…placed in a fairly warm room (68° to 72° F) for a month or more result in something edible is beyond me. We happen to love the taste, so that’s a bonus. Now, if you don’t like the taste of sauerkraut, but do like a good dill pickle, then there’s still an opportunity for you to begin fermenting. Before we started our second batch of kraut today, we started three quarts of Kirby cucumbers fermenting in a salt-water brine and a few other non-essential additions to the fermenting process, dill weed, garlic, red peppers, cabbage leaves, and grape leaves for crispness. 

Preparing the pickles for the fermentation process was very similar to making sauerkraut. This time, though, we just used a 1-quart large mouth canning jar. The extra Kraut Kaps came with my second order from Primal Kitchen. I know what you’re thinking (second order?)…LOL! Here’s the web address: www.etsy.com/shop/PrimalKitchen.  Order a starter kit and have a little fun fermenting. 

Trials and Tribulations of an MFPer

Don’t think I’ve been idle because I haven’t blogged since the first of this month. I have been canning like crazy. Actually, Verne would probably say I’m a crazy canner or just plain crazy. It’s true. I have a passion for putting food by, in general. But, it’s not canning that’s kept me from blogging.

Less than three months ago I graduated from the MFP training and was faced with the community service hours I’d agreed to complete prior June 2015. This thought ranked right up there with facing a dentist appointment. I fully intended to do it, but I wanted a painless experience with plenty of novocaine. Not being one to procrastinate, I wasted no time and agreed to assume certain responsibilities within the organization, including a co-coordinator role (Vera is my cohort) for 2014-15 public classes. I envisioned spending my volunteer hours at home in front of my computer working off my time by preparing handouts on food preservation. Right up my alley!

I volunteered for the position on the first Monday in August. By the second Saturday of the month I was standing in front of a classroom of strangers demonstrating water bath canning...this couldn’t be further from my plan. I’ve spent hours re-working class handouts and creating checklists to be used by the presenters. However, with September’s class right around the corner, I’m now being forced to interface with the other volunteers.  None of these people seem to check their email more than weekly…frustrating! I’m a “multiple-times-per-day kind of girl,” so by my third email, I’m no longer gently coaxing them to do their part, but I’m rather bluntly screaming (all caps does the job): “This is my third attempt to reach you. Will you PLEASE send me the DAMN RECIPE you plan to demo!!!”? My last line of attack will be to go low-tech and pick up the phone and call them. In fairness to these volunteers, they are just that: volunteers; and, I’m sure they don’t approach this assignment with the same sense of urgency that I do. As Public Education Coordinator (Top Dog), the buck stops here and I’m feeling the pressure! This kind of stress was not in my original plan to earn hours. I can already see this is going to be a thankless job and within a few short months everyone will hate me…the very reason I was hoping to stay behind the scenes. Double Damn! I may just let my much-nicer cohort do the calling. We’ll do the good cop, bad cop thing and see how that works. My hours? Let me just say 50 hours is laughable. I’ll have them by the end of October and by yearend will be so fully immersed in this program that I’ll never find my way out and have no time left for all of the things I so enjoy doing (alone). Goodbye canning. Goodbye quilting. Goodbye life as I’ve known it (and liked it).

On a more pleasant note, sometime in August I managed to find enough personal time to browse an email from William Sonoma and order a Kilner Jam Pot. I’d never heard of a jam pot, but based on the description I knew it was something I needed. Strike that last word…it was something I “wanted”. After using it a dozen times I now know that it is something every jammer needs! What an amazing pot! Here’s the sales pitch: “The Kilner Jam Pan is a hard wearing stainless steel pan featuring a pouring lip and carrying handle…it has an 8 litre capacity with an internal litre and pint measuring gauge with an encapsulated base for even heat distribution.” When I removed it from the box and saw its size I regretted not buying a smaller one, although it was only offered in the 8-litre size. It was huge! It only took one use and I realized that the large size (not a single splatter on my stove), the heavy bottom (no scorching), and the pint markings on the inside (great for reductions) were three of its best features. 

In addition to preserves, we’ve used it for blanching fruits and veggies and making extra large batches of sauces to be frozen. I recently received a Chef’s Catalog and they have a similar jam pot called the Maslin Pan in both a large 10-quart and a smaller 6-quart size. Both come with a lid. My Kilner is lidless. (:  Over 70 customers have left rave reviews of the Maslin pot giving it a near perfect average score of 5! Hmmmmm…I’m seriously thinking about ordering the baby Maslin for small-batch preserving and more.

In my last post I confessed to several failures in the kitchen. While we haven’t achieved perfect success, our failure rate is certainly on the decline…leaving me few bloopers to blog. No one wants to hear about the successes. The good thing about less than perfect results is the research it prompts and the stories I have to tell while I do public demos. (Yes, I’ll be doing more of them. I got through the last without fainting or vomiting, so I’m thinking they will just get easier with more experience.) Our only problem this month was again with peaches. We had planned to make another trip to the Fruit Bowl to buy more peaches. This time, O’Henry’s. I’ve been hearing about O’Henry peaches from a couple of my friends since I began making jam in 2013. I missed their season last year and was determined to time our trip appropriately this year. The O’Henry peach was developed in the 1970’s by UC-Davis as the perfect canning peach and I’ve been anxious to compare it to the Elberta. Well, our trip to buy O’Henry’s was planned and then, unfortunately, it had to be postponed a few weeks. I’m learning that the window of opportunity to purchase various varieties of fruit and vegetables is often as short as two to three weeks. By waiting those couple of weeks, we nearly missed the season. The day we went, the last of the O’Henry’s had been picked that morning. It was a near miss. However, being a positive person, I just took our timing as a good sign (and a reminder of the time-sensitive nature of canning from buying to preserving). We went home with almost 30 pounds of peaches and got busy in the kitchen. This time we did it by the book: read the recipe, staged our canning paraphernalia, blanched the peaches and promptly placed them into a cold water bath with ascorbic acid, filled the wide-mouth jars with the peeled peaches, and processed according to the recipe...just as I was taught. Sue, my food preservation teacher/guru, would be proud of me.

By the book, and yet the peaches boiled over during the processing turning the canning water to a pale shade of pink and they continued to spew out simple syrup for five minutes after being removed from the canner? And, why did I get an inch of frothy white bubbles at the top of one jar? I didn’t panic this time and refrigerate them all after canning (to be used in peach margaritas). The seal was good, even though the liquid was well below the ½ inch headspace line. Here are a couple of possibilities for boil over or siphoning, as it is sometimes called. Too little headspace (clearly not a problem now), rings may be too tight or not tight enough, or the jars may be packed too tightly which can start a siphon. I suspect the latter. I like to tightly pack the peaches knowing they will reduce in size during processing leaving them floating about 1-1/2” above the bottom once they cool. As for the frothy bubbles? 

I don’t know the answer to that one. They are obviously tiny air bubbles that occurred after the jar was removed from the canner. The question is why? I’ve spent over two hours on the web reading self-taught canning experts’ theories and am no closer to an answer. I did accuse my helper of leaving soap in the jar, but he assured me the jars were rinsed twice and then spent over 30 minutes in the water bath canner heating. So, I crossed that off my list of possibilities. If you have a scientific explanation or a truly original idea, send it to me. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this. One last thing, I’m looking for a new assistant. After accusing the last one of leaving soap in the jar, he got mad and quit, so I’m kind of in a bind here.

More Confessions from the Master of Mess-Ups

When the girls were in elementary school they would occasionally do something that was not quite to their liking and they would say, “I made a mess-up.” (Probably all kids say that, but it was especially cute coming from our two precious daughters.) I like the term and use it, not only because it conjures up sweet memories of our children, but it also helps soften my true reaction to a failed project, which is to scream, “S**T, another failure!!!” Most of our attempts at preserving food have been successful and go unmentioned. It’s these less than perfect results, these failures, which haunt me a bit. So, I need to use this forum one more time (providing there are no more failures) to consider and hopefully explain why each one of this month’s canning mess-ups occurred.

The peaches…a special trip to Lodi to buy them and an afternoon of hot work in the kitchen to can nine quarts of the things, and what do we have? Nine quarts of over-processed, brown-tinged Elberta’s in the refrigerator/freezer. We managed to make every mistake in the book and then some. The first lesson in canning: Focus, minimize all distractions. Not only were we not focused and did not go over the recipe, but we were preoccupied the entire time with taking photos (remember Ann, the reporter who needed pictures for her article and the reason we were canning peaches in the first place?). Next, we either didn’t remember from canning peaches last year (yes, we’d done this before!), but once peeled they need to be placed in water with lemon juice or ascorbic acid, which minimizes the browning from oxidation. Like apples, peaches will brown very quickly if left exposed to the air. And they did! We were cold-packing the peaches, which means the uncooked peaches are put into a hot jar, a hot simple syrup is poured over them, a warm lid and ring applied, and then the jars are placed in a boiling water bath canner and processed according to the recipe. Verne had prepared several quart jars, both regular and large mouth. I grabbed one of the jars and attempted to stuff the peach halves through its “regular” mouth opening (kind of like stuffing a size 12 arse into size 10 jeans). Not a chance for those extra-large peaches to go through a 3” opening. It took a few jars of mutilated peaches before we went searching for additional wide-mouth jars, which then had to be thoroughly washed and prepared for canning. Time was ticking. When we were finally ready to process the jars, everything was room-temp to cold…the jars, the simple syrup, the lids. This has to explain our catastrophic results. They didn't seal! In fact, the syrup bubbled over reducing its level in each jar by a good ½” and creating a sticky bond between the lid and glass jar, which a less informed canner might consider a seal…not me, though. I was not about to be fooled by a false (sticky) seal and all of the jars went into the fridge. According to Lauren, an “epic fail” as the peaches were for her! Here's the $50+ picture...

I’m scheduled to teach a class on jams and jellies in the fall. My preparation has included several hours of research on the various commercial pectins available as well as homemade pectin and, of course, the slow-cook or reduction techniques to making a no-added pectin jam. Rather than just research the topic, I decided to test each of these pectins/techniques by using them to make a batch of strawberry jam. I chose that particular fruit because strawberries are plentiful and inexpensive this time of year. Also, if you remember reading my previous "canning mess-ups" blog, I had severe fruit float with my new Pomona Pectin and assumed (bad idea to assume) that it was due to the brand of pectin I was using. I ended the blog post by saying “the jury is still out (on Pomona).” Well, the jury has returned with a NG verdict, Not Guilty. Every jar of pectin jam I’ve made so far (four different brands) has had significant fruit float (solids at the top, jelly at the bottom). I have yet to make my no-added pectin strawberry jam, which is a slow cook reduction. However, I’d be willing to bet money that it will be perfect with no fruit float. My theory is this: the quick cooking time used with added-pectin jams does not sufficiently remove/release the air from the fruit making it lighter than the jelled liquid in which it’s preserved. It thus has a tendency to float to the top. A reduction jam is cooked for 30-40 minutes, constantly stirring, until the mixture has reduced by one-third to one-half. At the end of the cooking time, it is one cohesive glob (technical term) and (this is my theory…you won’t find it in a food science book) much of the air has been removed due to the constant stirring and the long cooking time. Secondly, the liquid has jelled sufficiently to keep the fruit particles suspended. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!

We now arrive at our third failure in July: Pickles. I know this sounds like an excuse, but by reading past blog posts you know that I readily admit to my failures and shortcomings…It was a very bad recipe! I was so excited to be taking our second big step in our journey into home food preservation…Making Pickles. I was hoping for a pickle something like Claussen or Vlasic, but didn’t really expect perfect results from our first attempt. Sadly, they didn’t turn out to be like Claussen or Vlasic or any other pickle I’ve ever eaten and they were so bad, so salty they were inedible. No, I didn’t expect perfection, but certainly was not prepared for total Failure. We tossed the six-pint jars, spent an afternoon commiserating, and got up the next day with a mission to find the perfect dill pickle recipe.  We searched our cookbooks as well as the Internet. With few exceptions, all dill pickle recipes call for large amounts of salt. I’ve found one recipe by Ball that uses their commercially-available pickling concoction that we’re going to try next. If we don’t have better results, our plan is to put quick pickles on the back burner (pun intended) and move on to fermented pickles for now…a much longer and more intimidating process, but it does seem to use less salt.  For now, I’d avoid eating pickles at the Moser’s and just stick to the peach margaritas!