A Pickle for All Seasons
Last Saturday I cooked dinner for this special gent‘s birthday. I knew it was going to be for a lot of people and that it should be mostly if not all vegetarian. I also knew it would be for at least sixteen people (we ended up with enough food for twenty), so it was time to get creative.
For years, there has been no other cookbook I’ve turned to first than Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I was a strict vegetarian myself for several years in college, where it was not only easy to eat relatively healthily and meat-free, but also in many ways encouraged (and I’m not just referring to the less than savory looking hamburgers.) Though now a happy meat-eater, I still love great tofu dishes and vegetables at every meal. For this meal, Deborah surely came through. I’ll share the full menu, but for our purposes here, I’d like you to feast (ahem) your eyes on these beauties:
Deborah’s Pickled Carrots and Garlic with Cumin–a great way to start things off. My first attempt at pickling something other than cucumbers was indeed a success, and rather a breeze. They were the first thing I made around 9:30 a.m. that morning, and they spent the day in the refrigerator doing their pickling best. Another starter was Jicama and Cucumbers with Chile and Lime (I couldn’t not have a cucumber somewhere.)
And just how did I get those delicious carrots and garlic and the brine into my wide-mouth jar, you ask? Well, with my handy jar funnel of course, fresh from my Ball Utensil Set
Full menu to follow…
