I was making bread and butter pickles the other day, and Nancy casually asked me what I was going to write about this month. I said, half in jest, making pickles, maybe. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that it was a good idea.

It was only a couple of generations ago that home canning and preservation was a way of life for nearly everyone who didn't live in a big city. I can remember picking elderberries, black caps and thimble berries in hedgerows, which were turned into jams and jellies. Tomatoes were either canned whole or turned into chili sauce, which smells wonderful while it was cooking, but you couldn't stop stirring it for a split second or it would scorch on the bottom imparting a miserable taste to the whole batch.

Peas, green and wax beans, and other vegetables were “put up” for winter use. Peaches, pears, plums and many other not so common fruit such as crab-apples, quince and seckel pears were also utilized.

During World War II Swiss Chard was touted as an alternative to meat as a protein substitute.

Accordingly, my mother raised rows of Swiss Chard and canned it. I apparently acquired a taste for the stuff, because I still raise it in my garden and can it for winter use.

Also during the second world war, meat and eggs were very scarce due to war time rationing and my folks, as well as many others decided to raise a few chickens for the eggs and occasional chicken dinner.

I can still remember the gruesome business of watching the chickens being beheaded and then run around the yard literally like “chickens with their heads off” while they bled out. Then came an even worse ordeal, the evisceration of the carcass and then dunking them in a big pot of boiling water to loosen the feathers. Plucking and rubbing the hot soggy stinking foul (maybe that's why they call them that?) got most of the feathers off the bird and onto you!

The remaining feathers and pinfeathers were singed off over an old kerosene stove. Talk about a bad smell! At any rate some were eaten and some were canned using an old Burpee pressure canner. While the chickens thus processed tasted good in a stew or fricassee, they sure weren't anything to look at in a glass Mason jar on a basement shelf.

I liked to can produce in season, and for years I canned applesauce, pickles of many kinds, beets, spaghetti sauce, tomatoes, beans and peaches, pears, plums and other produce.

I've gotten kind of lazy and now only do tomatoes, Swiss chard and several kinds of pickles, most of which I give away. I mentioned above that I was making bread & butter pickles - here is the recipe that I use, which requires no water bath processing and can easily be done in an afternoon. Give it a try.

Denny Randall is president of the Old Brutus Historical Society in Weedsport.

Bread & Butter Pickles

Makes about 10 pints

1 peck small diameter cucumbers

4 medium cooking onions

2 bell peppers, red or green

1 cup canning salt

Some ice cubes

5 cups sugar

1/ 2 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon celery seed

2 tablespoons mustard seed

3 cups cider vinegar

2 cups water

Scrub the cukes thoroughly with a brush. Slice very thin; a food processor works best.

Quarter the onions and slice thin, and cut peppers into a coarse dice.

Mix the salt with the three vegetables in a stainless steel or enamel pot. Do not use aluminum. Bury two quarts of crushed ice in the mixture and let stand three hours.

Meanwhile, mix together sugar, turmeric, ground cloves, celery seed, mustard seed, cider vinegar and water.

Heat to almost boiling. Drain pickles and rinse once; drain well again.

Add boiling syrup to pickles and bring to a boil again. Pack in jars and seal.