Pickled

It’s mid August and the call could come any day. There will be no time to spare; at any moment I can expect Katharine to call “The cucumbers are here.” So I made my to-do list of essentials and checked it twice. Driving past a farm I screeched to a stop. Rows and rows of dill could be seen from the road. I bartered with the farmer for her dill in exchange for two jars of Lehmkuhl Dill pickles. In town I purchased wide-mouth canning jars, lids and bands.

Back home, I checked for cracks by running my finger around the rim of every jar and cycled everything through the dishwasher. Equally essential, though, is a bottle of Middle Sister wine bought solely for its name. But there in was the problem: too much wine, too much laughter, and too much salt in the pickle brine.   ………The Three Sister Rule to follow.

Pickle-making day has a set routine. My brother-in-law drags an ancient Maytag wringer-washer to the patio where the cukes are gently agitated in ice-cold water.   Karen, the eldest, and I have one job, in fact we are only permitted the one task. We gently scrub each and every cucumber with a soft cloth and then ever so gently snip off the ends. Carefully, we add the cleaned cucumbers to ice-cold water, a secret to their crispness. Katharine is the packer and the brine maker. In each wide-mouth sterilized quart jar, she adds a sprig of dill and two gloves of garlic. Then gently she packs cucumbers upright circling the jar until full. After adding another sprig of dill and a glove of garlic she pours the brine, a Lehmkuhl secret not even shared with her two sisters, who are still snipping and scrubbing every darn cucumber, a whole bushel full.

The jars are processed for several minutes, not really sure how long because Katharine, although the youngest sister, is in charge. We take a break for lunch, maybe a little more wine and listened for the sweetest sound, pop….pop…..pop. The lids are sealed on all 40 jars of Lehmkuhl Dill pickles.

So what happened a few years back? Katherine who was up before dawn on pickle making day had Sloppy Joes simmering in her Crock-pot, crackers and cheese and Kenny’s licorice and wine waiting for her two traveling sisters who added more wine. It may be 10:00 in the morning, but this is pickle making day, and heck somewhere it is 5:00, so we enjoyed the food and the wine and we laughed and shared stories and drank more wine. Sometime in November, I pried off the sealed lid and sliced our famous pickles in anticipation of our efforts. That was the moment we discovered our error. From that fateful day we now recite The Three Sister Rule: No wine before the brine at the start of every pickle-making day.