Harvesting

There's something about preserving that brings people together. Even after a long day (13 hours) at work my fellow cooks are still up for lending a hand. Especially, when it comes to something so seasonal like pickling cucumbers or harvesting the last of Ontario strawberries for jam. In this we did both. The good thing about my crew is that before i even ask, they already have there hands in on the action. We had two bushels of cukes. Unfortunately, they wern't the gherkin size ones i was expecting. Supposedly you cant find those in ontario. Anyways, we separated them into small, medium and large. It literally felt like a bottomless pit, luckily we killed time talking smack and drinking beers. Nearing the end, we started fighting over what size constitutes a small, medium, large and to see 

who could find the smallest cucumber. Typical of 4 cooks at 1 o'clock in the morning. I poured ice water over the cukes and plan to let them sit over night to crisp up, we will start the fermentation process tomorrow. I halved and quartered the strawberries, then mixed them with a bit of sugar. Im trying a new 3 day recipe, supposedly it helps keep the strawberries a bright red rather then doing everything in one shot where you have to boil them hard for a long period of time to achieve the right consistency, while also losing there colour.