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Boston Globe

Putting up summer produce is the most gratifying, old-fashioned activity

Ripe summer tomatoes can be frozen whole to use later in the year. Sheryl Julian Advertisement Every summer I get the idea that I'm going to put up a bunch of things. But then summer comes and there's so much else to do. I end up making a single large batch of one thing. For years, I pickled green beans with masses of fresh dill, then for a couple of years I roasted tomatoes for sauce, Advertisement Many pickle recipes call for submerging the jars in a big pot of boiling water. If everything is sterile and you use proper canning jars, this seals the jars so you can keep them in a cool spot in the pantry for many months, like the jars of pickles you buy at the supermarket. Cherie Denham, author of 'The Irish Bakery,' has a recipe for lemon curd, shown here. Sheryl Julian But that's not what we're doing here. This recipe must be kept in the fridge because you haven't sealed the lids as if you're canning. You've just screwed on the lids. For her cucumber pickles, my mother used short pickling cukes or larger, longer 'slicing cucumbers' as they're called. She had one of the oldest, simplest The cucumber slices went into a brine made with equal parts distilled white vinegar and sugar (much too much sugar for today's tastes). She'd pop in a little turmeric, dry mustard, and salt, along with thin strips of red bell pepper and sliced onions. Pickling cucumbers at the Kimball Fruit Farm stand at a farmers' market recently. Sheryl Julian Don't let the pickling brine boil, though other cooks might tell you to. Boiling makes the cucumbers lose their snap. They're ladled into canning jars — in my mother's case, that meant any old jars she had around, and I follow that pattern — then the lids are added, they're left to cool, and refrigerated for up to a month. Advertisement My mother, never one to pay a bit of attention to sell-by dates — she learned this during the When I make those pickles, I use much less sugar and only stubby pickling cukes, because I like smaller rounds. You have to keep turning them in the pot until all the slices are coated with liquid and starting to turn golden. Never let a wooden spoon or rubber spatula near the pot because the turmeric will turn the utensil yellow. Tomato sauce from Bliss Farm in Chester, Vt. Sheryl Julian Prettier and far more expensive are My batch this year made 4 pints. One pint went into a single Le Parfait jar I found in my glass collection that must have come from homemade jam someone gave me. For the rest, I made use of a pudgy French mustard jar and another jar from artichokes in brine that I bought for a recipe test. You get the idea. Catch-as-catch-can. Last summer at a barn dinner at Advertisement What I'm missing for my pickles is matching jars, a barn, a shelf in the barn to line up the jars, and the gloaming hour. Otherwise, mine too are magnificent. Sheryl Julian can be reached at