Crisp Squash Pickles

Canning season has begun!  Every winter we plan and dream about our gardens (we plant several) and they never quite end up how we planned, but that doesn't matter.  For some reason, we seem to be able to grow cantaloupes and watermelons in the dozens, but have trouble with "easy" veggies like tomatoes and zucchini.  So this year we planted an entire row of zucchini and an unfathomable number of tomato plants.  This approach seems to have worked for us, because we now have lots of green tomatoes and pounds and pounds of zucchini.

After rejoicing in the quantity of zucchini (I am less thrilled about the tomatoes, as I can no longer eat as many as I would like due to serious heartburn issues), I picked seven or so.  And there are still so many left growing!  Every time I picked one of the large ones, it seemed like there was a smaller one hiding under the leaves nearby.  It's nice that all the rain is helping with something, since it did not help our strawberry crop this year.

So, with the help of my food processor, I made four loaves of zucchini bread.  The first two will be gone by the end of the week.  The other two I froze before they get devoured. 

I then went to a book my mother purchased for me some years ago: the Farm Journal's Freezing and Canning Cookbook.  If you have a large amount of any kind of produce to deal with, or are looking for some new and interesting ways of mixing produce I highly recommend it.  Each year we try out some new recipes.  A few years ago we did Lime Pear jam.  Last year we tried Pickled Green Beans.  With all the zucchini I thought I would try Crisp Squash Pickles.

The recipe calls for 5 lbs of zucchini.  Having recently purchased a small digital scale, I had a geek moment when I measured out my zucchini, getting just the right combination of squash to equal (almost) 5 lbs.  Here is what 5.1 lbs of zucchini looks like:

I then went back to the food processor (I love that thing!) to make the slices:

From there I simply followed the recipe.  The final product looks pretty good.