Last week I made my second batch of dill pickles! I made my first batch of pickles in June 2010 before I started this blog but after I had started my 30 before 30 list. I made about 8 jars of pickles during my first batch and gave them all out pretty quickly. I got really great feedback from everyone who received a jar from my first batch and I could not wait to make more!

For the second batch of pickles I used a recipe for dill pickles from the The Joy of Pickling (which I picked up at Powell’s Books in Portland on my trip with Devon). My mom, a master of canning, helped me with processing this batch of pickles (ironically, she hates pickles!).

When planning out to make this large batch of pickles, I kept in mind that I wanted to make homemade gifts for the holidays this year. I planned it out that Oct 30th was exactly 8 weeks from Christmas (the amount of time it takes to process a batch of pickles). I spent all of Oct 30th preparing and pickling the dill pickles with my mom. I can’t wait till the holiday season starts and I can give out pickles for Christmas!

In the future I plan on making different pickled items and writing a blog tutorial about how to make dill pickles.