My wonderful mother-in-law, Lavon, gave me two cucumbers from her garden. Forgetting these were not genetically mutated supermarket cucumbers, I put them in the crisper drawer and forgot about them for a couple days. When I went to slice them up for lunch, I saw that they were getting a little soft. I didn’t want them to go to waste, so I made nearly free pickles.

I always save pickle juice when the pickles are gone. You can pickle many vegetables in this leftover liquid – carrots, onions, cauliflower, zucchini, hot peppers, etc. Just slice or cut the veggies into bite sized pieces and put them in the pickle jar. Shake the jar a couple times a day to make sure the veggies get pickled evenly. After three or four days, eat and enjoy.

I figure that the liquid constitutes about 1/4 of the price of the jar of pickles. My Aldi pickles were $0.99. So, 25 cents for the liquid and the cucumbers were free. You can make these pickles look more homemade by tossing in a few pinches of dill weed, parsley, marjoram, dried onion, etc. Put a little square or round piece of fabric over the jar lid, tie with a ribbon and you have a nice gift.

This idea not only reuses the pickle juice that most people would throw away, but it also reuses the glass jar. When the homemade pickles are gone, I thoroughly clean the glass jar and use it to freeze soups, broth, vegetables or tomato sauce.