Make your own pickles.

“Basically, everything had gone according to plan until it got to the sealing part. We boiled the can lids but we did it too early, so by the time the brine was in the jars, they weren’t as hot as they should have been. That was our first goof. The second goof was that we were using tall 1L jars, so even my mother’s biggest pot was too short for us to bathe the jars upright (a common thing done when canning food). So we bathed them sideways. This worked well enough, but one of the jars wasn’t sealed perfectly so some brine leaked out. [...] Some of the lids took a while to pop (signaling that they’re sealed), but luckily, we heard the last one pop during dinner, and let me tell you, the Beetlejuice musical got it wrong, because those pops are in fact the most beautiful sound.”

“So here we are in November, and we’ve opened two jars (the unbathed one [no one died!] and one of the regular ones) and things weren’t perfect. The pickles in the unbathed jar were a little too tough and tasted a bit too cucumbery, but I quickly got used to it and came to enjoy them. The pickles in the bathed jar weren’t as crunchy as I would have liked, so I’m kind of disappointed with that. [...] The experience was harder than I thought it would be, and I’m very glad I had my mom there to help because the process took longer than I anticipated, and as I mentioned, there were some roadblocks, so having her to talk things through with was great.”

“I sliced up my cucumbers and stuffed all the goodies into random sauce jars I already had. They chilled in the fridge for three days before I took the first bite. Initial thoughts? They are a smidge too sweet for my liking (I really don’t like sweet pickles). [...] But the cucumbers are crisp and crunchy! I’ve had 4-5 pickles now, and they are good, but I want to get them perfect before I start adding peppers.”