Greenwordchef's Blog

When I got my first job after college as a reporter for a small daily downstate newspaper, my mother took me out grocery shopping to stock the kitchen of my first apartment.

Like any recent college grad who didn’t know anything about cooking, I grabbed for the boxes of macaroni and cheese, canned tuna, and canned peas. Then I reached for a jar of dill pickles.

“No,” my mother said, returning the jar to the shelf. “Pickles are a luxury.”

Today, whenever I go shopping for my family, I always hesitate before reaching for dill pickles because at upwards of $3.50 per jar, they really are a luxury to people like me who are on a budget.

So when my mother-in-law recenty dropped off some fresh homegrown dill weed someone had given her, that got me thinking about making my own homemade dill pickles.

With Farmer’s Markets reopening for the season, the…