do you ever feel like you live two lives? i feel constantly caught between the realities of today and the someday i want to have. i'm not wishing it closer or trying to speed up time. i like today. i just like someday too.
so, where does your someday live?
mine lives in a little house in california.
with his and hers freezers. one full of cookie dough and corn kernels and pesto and celery tops waiting to become stock. the other full of ben & jerrys and lean pockets and ice packs.
it has a garden that will grow more than 10 cherry tomatoes in one season.
there are going to be lots of lazy sunday afternoons in that garden with mimosas and the new york times.
it has a live-in husband, and hopefully is full of lots of friends and family who live at least in the same dang time zone.
and, it has proper pantry i can fill with mason jars. mason jars filled with jam, and salsa, and pickles, and love. and hopefully no botulism.
because, someday, i'm going to make fig jam with my mom and her neighbor evangeline, who is pretty much anyone's hero for how to grow old. feisty! independent!
and, someday, i'm going to make the somm's best woman susan teach me how to make salsa. her dad is a legit tomato farmer and every year at harvest her whole family gets together to put up tomatoes.
i'm going to need some shelf space.
but today, i'm all about quick pickles. emphasis on the quick.
especially since they usually need to be quickly gone to make room in the poor overcrowded fridge for my next adventure!
spicy pickled onions are usually my quick pickle of choice. they are a surefire way to tell your taco night diners that you're serious about your tacos. but they're good on pretty much anything. except maybe cheesecake. maybe.
but this time, i branched out. watermelon rind pickles are trending hard in the foodie world right now, as are all kinds of preserves.
i bought the darlingist yellow watermelon at the farmers market. the somm had concerns about the yellowness. it was good, though. juicy.
aren't watermelon rinds pretty?
you lose all that lovely stripyness for the pickle though. sadly.
looks like cucumber. appropriate.
now it gets juicy again. and spicy, sweet, sour and all that good stuff.
Watermelon Rind Pickles
These last about a week, so I didn't make a lot. I also used less sugar because I don't really like sweet pikcles. It's an easy recipe to scale, and super easy to change up the flavorings. A quick Google will give you lots of other ideas like cardamon, star anise, allspice. I basically just used what I had.
- 1/2 small watermelon
- 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 strips lemon peel
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger (that's what I had - fresh ginger would be better)
- 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
- 1 tablespoon pink peppercorns
- 1 small red chile, roughly chopped
Separate the watermelon flesh from the rind, then peel the rind. This leaves you with the unpretty, cucumber-looking pale flesh. Slice this up or chop it up in chunks, whatever floats your boat. Remember that if it looks the same, it cooks the same, so try to keep your pieces similar. I am not sure what I was thinking when I took the rind off my watermelon the day before I made these and hacked it up into crazy pieces, so I ended up with same sized slices of rind for about a third of the small-mediumish sized watermelon, which was about all the rind I wanted.
Put all the other ingredients in a pot on the stove. Bring to a boil and stir until the sugar disolves. Add the rinds - the liquid should slightly more than cover the rinds. Simmer for about 8 to 10 minutes or until the rind chunks are tender.
Store in liquid in tupperware in the fridge for up to a week. Longer than that and the pickles start to get a bit soft.
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