I’ve been making refrigerator pickles like crazy -— bread and butter, pickled beets and onions, refrigerator sauerkraut. I’m using recipes from Mary’s Nest. For the bread and butter pickles, I’m using the little mini cucumbers they sell at Aldi. They call them Persian cucumbers at Sprouts. They’re not waxed. Mary’s recipe calls for putting a black tea bag in the bottom of each quart, so the tannin will make the pickles crunchy. And boy, is she right! You don’t taste any tea, but these are the crunchiest pickles I have ever had!
Also, I had some red and green grapes that had gotten too soft to eat, but were not spoiled, so I put them all together, and cooked them with a little water till they were completely cooked, added sugar and cooked that down thoroughly, then used my stick blender to pulverize everything. I didn’t use pectin, so it has a consistency a little thicker than homemade applesauce, but it sure tastes good. I’ll never throw away soft grapes again! I didn’t process it, but it only made one quart, and it’s nearly gone. If I make more, I’ll freeze it like strawberry freezer jam.
I’ve been culturing butter and sour cream, too. I use the buttermilk the cultured butter makes to make the sour cream, plus buttermilk biscuits, and more cultured butter! I’m having a blast. And I’ve been using ultra pasteurized cream, because I can’t afford the other cream; the ultra is only $1.55 a pint at Aldi, and that stuff lasts practically forever.
You are certainly creative! and I will check out ‘Mary’s Nest’, and will remember the tea bag idea when I finally get down to pickling.
I see the little unwaxed pickle-cukes at the local ethnic store in Summer, but I don’t really recall seeing them at the supermarket.
(We have an Aldi nearby, and I like going there near Christmas time - they have lots of European chocolate stuff, then. But normally, their parking lot is hell to deal with, so we stay away. We do have a Lidl, and they have lots of nice things, as well - though the pickings seem to have become slim since Covid.)