Pickling: A one touch side dish

When I think of pickling, I usually think of pickled cucumbers otherwise known as pickles.  When I was growing up, my dad went through a pickled egg phase and I've always turned my nose up at pickled beets so I guess I've always known they existed but I've not really given it a lot of thought until now.  Mostly, I just thought, "Who'd want to pickle everything?"

 One of the Amish novels that I've been reading lately was talking about the women being in a hurry to get lunch on the table one day and they "just served some pickled beets as a side."  Wow! That's when I realized that they are basically just dumping this side dish straight from a jar.  It's already been prepared so no further preparation necessary.  I tried this and just served my family pickles as a side one day.  It was that easy.

Then I started looking through recipes in my Ball Blue Book of Preserving and realized that quite a few of the recipes in there are actually just various types of pickled salads.  So far I've pickled cucumbers and squash.  If all goes as planned, I will pickle some beets later this week (I've never actually tried them!)

There are several other advantages to pickling.  You don't have to cook the vegetable again. You are preserving the vegetable without taking up precious freezer space. Cans are easily organized so if your freezer is anything like mine, you will actually be able to find it and know how much of it is left.

We do still need a pressure canner because I do want to learn to can our chicken broth and it might be nice to have some unpickled vegetables around occasionally.