I came across this new recipe for how to make homemade sweet pickles just in the last few weeks. These things are AMAZING, if you like sweet pickles anyway.
A quart of my homemade sweet pickles.
We had a Memorial Day party and my cousin brought these to share.
Sweet pickles from the store can’t hold a candle to these homemade sweet pickles. This is a cucumber and onion mix with a simple mix of spices and sugar poured over them and then heated. The best part about this recipe is that it’s a 10 minute recipe. You just can beat it.
They have such and awesome flavor and they make such crisp sweet pickles, you’d never believe it only took 10 minutes to make.
You can make these pickles a sweet and spicy mix too if you like by just adding some jalapeno peppers. I’m not real keen on spicy, but I know several people who would love that.
It’s deceptively easy and amazingly fast. You’ll be pleasantly surprised, I promise.
What you see here is all that’s needed for this easy crispy sweet pickle recipe.
Mary, my cousin, sent me a photo of the recipe she uses. From what I can read, a lady named Esther submitted this recipe in a contest to something called “Cooks Connection”. I couldn’t find anything local relating to Cooks Connection so I’m not real sure what that relates to. I couldn’t find a date on it either, so I’m not real sure how old it is or who to credit it back to.
So, in lieu thereof, I’ll credit my cousin Mary for this fabulous recipe.
I hope you all enjoy these as much as I did. I’ve made several batches since then and so far they have been a hit with everyone I’ve shared them with. I plan to make many more in the future.
Homemade Microwave Sweet Pickles
Ingredients
2 cucumbers, thinly sliced – not peeled
1 onion also thinly sliced. I’ve actually used 2 onions before just because they are so good in this recipe.
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Tumeric. A note on tumeric….it stains everything. My bowl stays yellow for a while after using it. Just keep that in mind and don’t spill it.
1/4 tsp Mustard Seed
1/2 tsp Celery Seed
1/2 cup Vinegar. I also used my Apple Cider Vinegar in this recipe. You can find out how to make that here.
1 cup sugar
Instructions
Mix the salt, tumeric, mustard seed, celery seed, vinegar, and sugar in a large microwave safe bowl.
The ingredients are mixed and the cucumbers and onions are sliced.
Slice the cucumbers and onions thinly and add to the bowl. Mix well to cover all the slices with the mix above.
Pour your mix over your sliced cucumbers and onions and stir well to cover every slice.
Microwave uncovered on high for 5 minutes.
Remove and mix well, again making sure you stir well to cover all the slices.
The beginning of best sweet pickles you’ve ever made. This is after the first 5 min.
Return the bowl to the microwave and heat again, uncovered, for another 5 min on high.
Remove from the microwave and let cool. Once they’ve cooled, refrigerate until cold. Now they’re ready to eat.
This recipe makes about a quart of pickles. I wasn’t able to get all the liquid in the quart jar along with the pickles. So I filled it all the way to the top and just added as much as I could
This recipe of sweet pickles had an extra onion added to the mix.
If you add an extra onion like I did, you’ll probably need another pint jar. With the extra pint jar you can get all the liquid into both jars.
Some people may think a cup of sugar is just too much. And that can be true, depending on your taste. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ll be adjusting the amount of sugar and spices just out of curiosity in future batches. I’m curious to see how they turn out.
That’s really all there is to homemade sweet pickles.
I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did. If you do, share it with everyone. This is just too good not to share.
Do you have a simple recipe for pickles? Did you try this recipe and adjust the ingredients a bit? Share in the comments below, I’d love to know. Or if you tried it just the way it is, leave a comment and tell me what you think. I look forward to hearing from you.
We’re growing a garden for the first time in several years. It’ll only be a small portion of the food we’ll eat this summer, but a little is better than none.
In the past, we’ve had a garden and grown tomatoes, a few peppers and some sweet potatoes, but it’s been a while, if ever, that we’ve actually made a full blown garden like the one we have now. I’m excited.
This is most of the garden.
When I was a kid my dad always had a garden and grew all kinds of vegetables that mom would freeze or can. I remember having to water and weed the garden during the summer. I think those jobs were mostly to keep me out of trouble during the weekday. But it was a way to make me responsible for something at a young age too. And while I hated having to do it, I’m glad they made me do. I did learn a thing or two, even if I would have never admitted it to them.
I also remember sitting on the back porch snapping bean and shelling peas with mom. While I wasn’t terribly fond of messing with the beans and peas, I did enjoy sitting out there with mom and dad on the porch. Those are good memories.
But, sadly, I didn’t appreciate the garden back then and missed the opportunity to learn a ton of lessons from my dad.
But, I’m learning now and I know that would make him happy.
My mortgage lifter tomato.
If you’ve ever eaten a homegrown tomato, you know how much better it is than a store bought tomato. It has so much more flavor, you can’t even compare the two.
That holds true for everything I’ve ever had out of a garden.
We have a compost pile too, but it’s not nearly big enough for the size of our garden. We’ve covered what we could with the compost we had and then bought some organic cotton burr to work into the rest.
Only half of this garden plot is being used because we haven’t been able to amend the soil in the other half yet.
We didn’t get the entire garden planted this year because we weren’t able to get the amendments we wanted worked into the soil over the whole garden before planting season and because we got 30 inches of rain last month. There was so much mud you just couldn’t get in it to do anything.
What We’re Growing In Our Garden
We did get several different kinds of vegetables planted, but not near as much as I’d like. But our ground is heavy clay and we have to get the rest of the ground amended in order to plant the rest. I hope to have that done in time to plant a fall garden.
Here’s what we have planted for this season.
Tomatoes
I started tomatoes from seed this year. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that. I actually only germinated them to see if they were good. The seeds were so old I really didn’t think they would be viable. Apparently, I was wrong. It was so cool.
I only have 1 mortgage lifter tomato, but it’s so pretty.
My Pink Brandywine tomatoes
Peppers
I did the same with peppers and it worked for them too. But then something ate them, completely. So, we had to buy new plant starts if we wanted peppers this year.
We have 5 pepper plants, but this is my first bloom.
Radishes
I remember as a kid mom and dad putting raw radishes on the table at every supper. I never liked them. Mom and dad loved them. But, recently we were watching a video on YouTube and a lady who grew them talked about roasting them being a game changer.
So, I thought why not, and we gave it a try. They were awesome!! So, needless to say, we’ve planted a couple of rows of radishes. Let me tell you roasted radishes are completely different than raw ones.
This one is about ready to pull.
My baby radishes
We started the bigger radishes quite a while ago and have been eating them already. So we decided to plant a few more rows for later.
We didn’t have a great germination rate in the first batch so we planted more of them the second round. Of course they all germinated this time.
Okra
We also planted a few kinds of okra. I’ve never been an okra fan but my daughter-in-law recently discovered she liked them, so I planted some for her. My husband and I decided we’d give them another try too.
Isn’t that burgundy okra stalk pretty? Can’t wait to see what it will look like when it grows up.
I planted two different kinds. One is the burgundy okra, shown above. The pictures I’ve seen show them to be very pretty plants. The other is the Crimson Spineless which is what I heard a lot of people talking about. Since I didn’t know anything about them, I decided I would start with what others liked best.
Most of the okra came up too. I’m pretty happy to see that. I really hope we like it too.
Cantaloupe
Several years ago a cantaloupe grew in an old compost pile we had. I got about 12 cantaloupes from that plant and they were so good and juicy. So I saved the seeds out of the last one I had. This year I planted three of those seeds. They are all growing. I’m so excited for those.
My compost cantaloupe. I have no idea what kind they are, but if they’re anything thing like last time, I’ll be a happy camper.
Green Beans
They have a ways to go yet, but they’ll get there. We have 7 of these.
We both like green beans and have recently discovered these new beans (to us, at least) called Chinese noodle beans. I found something a little different called Chinese Yard Long Beans.
The people who talk about them rave about the taste.
They’re pole beans, so we’ve planted them on a trellis. I can’t wait for them to grow up the trellis and give them a try when they’re ready.
After Thoughts
As an “after thought” we decided to try a few rows of corn and a row of carrots. My husband loves carrots and I wanted to try the baby corns, which he loves too. The corn has just begun to come up, but we only planted 2 rows, so I’m not real sure if they’ll pollinate correctly and actually produce ears. We’ll see.
Part of the corn crop.
My husband planted 3 different types of carrots. All the seeds were from 2013, so I wasn’t hopeful, but 2 of these 3 types have germinated and started to grow. We’re both pretty excited about those.
See those tiny pieces of green? Trust me, those are carrots.
We found this growing in the compost pile too. As you can see, it’s taken over and neither of us have it in us to kill these beautiful plants. We pulled one out and put it in the garden earlier. Our plan was to remove the rest of these once the one we took out started growing. But, the one we transplanted didn’t grow. It hasn’t died, but it just won’t grow. So, we decided to leave the these.
Most of that is squash.
There’s a couple of tomatoes in there too. Everything is volunteer, so we’ll let them go and see what happens. This means, of course, we won’t be turning the compost for a while. I guess, that’s okay too.
See that tomato up under that squash and what I think is a sunflower.Here’s the other tomato, smack dab in the middle of all that squash, with a nice spread of lambs quarter right next to it. I think I’ll pull the lambs quarter out though.
Later in the year I’ll start planting for fall. We’ll plant things that like the cooler weather like leafy greens, peas and hopefully some broccoli. We’ll just see what grows.
My husband and I have decided to make this garden an experiment. We’ll try things and see what happens and next year we’ll adjust.
In my opinion, this is one of my best DIYs yet. I can’t wait for everything to begin producing. I love the taste of homegrown food. It’s funny how things change as you grow up and get older. I hope my grandkids learn it sooner than I did.
As our garden grows more, I’ll update with new posts. I hope you’ll come back later to see what it looks like.
Are you growing a garden this year? What did you plant? What’s coming up? Do you have pictures, post them below. I’d love to see what your garden looks like. If you’re not growing one, I hope I’ve inspired you to try. Experiment, see what you can grow. You can build on it more next year. Let’s share some ideas so we can all try something new next year.
Homemade bug spray is easy to make. Your homemade bug spray can be as organic as you want it to be, there are no chemicals and best of all it works.
Homemade bug spray is not going to be near as long lasting as the store bought stuff. I don’t know what they use to make it stick to you so long, but this homemade bug spray doesn’t have it.
My batch of bug spray. Sorry for that crooked picture.
What we buy in the stores has so many ingredients in it we can’t pronounce that I’m just not willing to use on me and mine, if I can at all help it. And like so many things we buy these days we just don’t know where that stuff came from or how it was made.
I use this homemade spray on my grandkids, my furbabies, and myself so I want it to be as natural and safe as it can be.
Like most homemade stuff, it doesn’t have the staying power the industrial stuff you buy from a store does. You have to remember to reapply it every few hours especially if you are sweating badly or getting wet. But that’s okay because it smells good and it’s all natural so it can’t hurt you.
What Attracts Mosquitoes
There are several things that attract mosquitoes to the human body. Here’s a short list of the primary ones.
Carbon dioxide. This is the gas that we expel when we breath. This is what lets them know there is a food supply nearby.
Body Odor. If you sweat, make sure you wash off regularly to help prevent the growth of bacteria. The bacteria that grows from sweating is what creates the odor that attracts mosquitoes to you.
Secretors. Sounds terrible doesn’t it? Apparently about 80% of the human population are what’s considered to be “secretors”. These people secrete saccarides (a sugar based chemical) and antigens. These antigens indicate your blood type and mosquitoes like type “O” blood most and type “A” blood least. Who knew?
Lactic acid. We emit lactic acid through our skin through activity and by eating certain foods. So the more activity, the more lactic acid you will emit. Foods like soured milks, kefir, yogurt and some cottage cheeses contain the lactic acid your body emits.
The above items are all related to scent which is the primary attraction for mosquitoes. Some other things that attract them are heat, moisture, movement and color.
I found out that pregnant women are shown to exhale 21% more carbon dioxide and tend to be warmer in the belly area. So any pregnant ladies may want to wear light weight long sleeves and pants to avoid as much exposure as possible.
I also found out they like dark colors. I’m kind of fond of wearing dark colors too, so that’s a problem for me. I might have to change up what I wear when I’m home in the evening.
Most things you buy for any kind of bug control either contains or at least smells like citronella. And there’s a good reason for that.
Citronella
From what I read in researching for this post citronella works because it helps mask the carbon dioxide from our breathing and the lactic acid that we emit through our skin.
Lavender
My lavender plant with the cute ceramic chicken.
I use lavender because I like the smell and for all the other reasons I mentioned in my previous post here. But I also found out that mosquitoes just flat don’t like the smell. I actually read they they will avoid it “at all costs”.
From what I’ve read, mosquitoes don’t like several of the heavily scented plants and herbs like geraniums, basil, several types of mints, and rosemary, just to name a few. You know, all those herbs that you can run your hands through and then smell the oils on them.
I like the smell of citronella and lavender, so that’s the mixture I’ve gone with. You can use the mix that you like best using the essential oils mentioned above. You can research other herbs too to find those that you might like that I haven’t named.
My Basil plant.
Homemade Bug Spray Recipe
This recipe is so easy. It consist of water and essential oils. The only caveat is that you use real essential oils, not the synthetic equivalents. They won’t have the same potency that the real essential oils have.
You can choose the potency you like best, but this is how I mix it.
About 1-1/2 to 2 Cups of water in a spray bottle.
I added about 100 drops of essential oils. 50 of Citronella and 50 of lavender.
Remember you’ll have to shake your spray bottle every time you use it. Oil and water don’t mix, so you need to help that along every time you use it.
There are several places you can get your essential oils. Most of the organic stores in your area will sell essential oils. I get my oils from doTERRA. I actually became a doTERRA consultant for the discounts because I found I used essential oils for so many things. You can see what all they have here, if you like.
Several different essential oils you can use.
There are several places to get your spray bottles. Depending on what was in it, you could reuse an old spray bottle. You’d want to make sure it never any anything kind of toxic or harmful liquids in it previously. Make sure you clean it thoroughly before using, including the sprayer nozzle.
I hope you enjoy this recipe. Experiment with different scents to find the one you like best. You could actually make specific scents for specific people. Play with it and have fun. Let me know what you come up with by leaving a comment below. I really would like to know.
Hope you all enjoyed your Memorial Day Holiday Weekend.
Today, I had planned on writing about making your own bug spray this week, but after working in the garden this weekend, I thought I would write about sunburn gel instead.
Bet you can guess why.
Getting the garden planted, finally!!
I’m not one of those people who tan all nice and pretty brown. I can eventually get there after lots of time in the sun with oils and water to cool you off. But that was in my younger days, not so much now.
We were finally able to get into our garden this weekend and finish planting. I know it’s late, but we had about 30 inches of rain during the month of May. That’s an entire years’ worth of rain in a month. It was crazy and a muddy mess.
This is my Chinese Yard Long Bean trellis. I can’t wait.
It’s also been fairly cool so far this spring. Usually by this time we are getting temps in the mid to upper 90’s and it’s miserable. And while it was pretty warm this weekend, it wasn’t near what I would consider “hot and miserable”. It was simply a beautiful sunny weekend.
We had a nice breeze blowing through the garden and I was determined to get some stuff done. And it was great to just be able to get outside without drowning.
By the time we got done my husband told me I looked like a lobster. I was pretty red, but it really didn’t hurt. We did finally turn the AC on this weekend.
The Recipe for Sunburn Gel
A few years ago I made this mixture just cause I thought the ingredients would work well on a sunburn. It actually surprised me how well it worked. It’s perfectly natural and very easy to make and it will cool your skin like no other.
What’s left of my mix over the last few years. I love this stuff.
It’s made 50/50 coconut oil and aloe vera gel. Super simple. I just shake it before each use.
Coconut Oil
I know they say not to put oils on a burn as it may cause the burn to continue to worsen. I also know this can be true from first hand experience.
But I’ve been using it mixed with aloe vera gel for a few years now and have had nothing but relief.
I’ve even used this mix on a burn my husband got from work on his arm and it relieved that pain too.
So you may want to mix just a little and test it on yourself before you use it on anyone else. Everyone I’ve ever suggested it to has loved it, but everybody is different too. So test it out first in a small spot before rubbing it all over you or someone else’s back.
Aloe Vera Gel
Everyboby knows aloe vera is good for burns. You can just cut a leaf from the plant and use it on a burn. But I actually buy aloe vera gel in bulk and use it in several different lotions I make, but I have it around most of the time.
Our newly replanted aloe vera plant. My husband is so proud of this plant. We’ve had this plant since it was a baby, about 10 years ago. We’ve just replanted it again.
I buy my aloe vera gel at Mountain Rose Herb or at Bulk Apothocary. I’m sure there are plenty of places to buy it, but these are my favorites.
Aloe vera is an anti-inflammatory, it promotes circulation and inhibits the growth of bacteria, all of which are great for burns. BUT, it also just cools a burn, which is what we are all looking for after a sunburn.
My new little garden buddy. He loves grub worms.
Now, we have to use some common sense and not stay out till you blister. When my husband told me I looked like a lobster, I was pretty red, but it didn’t sting to just touch my shoulders. They weren’t comfortable in a shower though, by any means.
But after I used this mixture on my shoulders and arms, I instantly felt relief and by the next day I was in the garden again with no pain. I did remember to use sun screen before I went outside this time so I didn’t repeat the process.
The Sun and Your Skin
I used to lay out in the sun for the perfect tan when I was younger. I always did and I still do think that tanned skin looks healthier than untanned skin. But I know now there is a difference in how much tan is healthy and that too much is really too much.
Today, I’ve discovered all that hours and hours in the sun was probably not the best way to go. While exposure to the sun can help the skin manufacture vitamin D, too much exposure to the ultraviolet rays from the sun can be too harsh.
This is the beginning of my cantaloupe hill. Be sure to use your sun screen when you make these.
Excessive exposure to the sun can reduce elasticity and cause premature skin aging. It can also damage or even kill skin cells. I don’t think that’s the best way to go for my older skin. Worst of all it’s the chief cause of skin cancer too. No thanks.
So now I still enjoy the sun, but I try to remember to use sun screen and limit my time out in the hot afternoon. I still like the look of tanned skin and still feel it looks healthier than untanned skin, but I’ve also altered my opinion of how much tan that needs to be.
Do you have a remedy for sunburn, (other than not going out in it, of course)? Share it in the comments. I’m excited to see what you’ve come up with.
