Thursday Recipe - Pickled somethings

My daughter and I are on a road trip visiting friends and attending a con. The drive was very long so when we found an old used bookstore in the middle of nowhere Montana, we had to stop. We found a wonderful cookbook - The Complete Book of Pickles and Relishes by Leonard Louis Levinson, Hawthorn Books Inc., 1965. I'm in love already. I want to make just about every recipe in the book. (Sorry, the Jerusalem artichoke pickles will never happen at my house. I detest Jerusalem artichokes.) I even found recipes for pickled crabapples and Lady apples. Mustard pickles, fruit pickles, vegetable pickles, relishes galore - this book is making me drool. I love pickles.

There's one page the book opens to. Here's the recipe on that page. I'm making this one as soon as I can find the ingredients. I'm making as many of the others as I can. I'll post recipes and my results as I do it. If not this summer, definitely next.

Curry Pickle Chunks

3 lbs. 4-5 inch pickling cucumbers
1 2/3 c. white vinegar
1 c. sugar
1 1/2 t. curry powder
2 T. mustard seed
1 1/2 t. celery seed
2 t. salt (pickling salt preferred. The iodine in regular salt can make pickles turn a funky brown color.)

Wash cucumbers thoroughly, cut into chunks.

Combine remaining ingredients and mix well. Heat to a boil. Add cucumbers. Heat just to boiling point; then simmer while quickly packing 1 hot sterilized jar at a time. Fill to 1/8 inch from top. Be sure vinegar solution covers vegetables. Seal each jar at once. Makes 4 pints.

If you make these, please let me know how they turn out.