Dear Mothers,
Ya know in the old days, when the cool days of autumn would come, the old time Mothers would start gathering all of the odds and ends out of her garden before the late fall freeze came. Nothing was ever wasted.
She would take her basket of green tomatoes into the pantry and put them into paper sacks to wait for them to ripen. Then she would gather up all of the other leftover garden vegetables. Maybe there was a handful of green beans and a few overripe and too big cucumbers. She may have found a couple ears of corn someone forgot to pick. Maybe some small cabbages that grew after the first one was cut off. As she pulls the garden up, she finds some onions and peppers, too. And out of all of this, Mother made Piccalilli.
Mother would wash up all of her gleanings and then put them through her meat grinder. Then she made a relish with just the leftovers from her summer garden. After all of these vegetables went through the meat grinder, she would put them in a big pan of vinegar and sugar, spices and fresh herbs from her herb garden. She brought this mix just to a boil. Then she canned her creation in jars to store in the root cellar for winter meals. She put in herbs like garlic and ginger root and maybe some horseradish. Dill and marjoram. Mother takes the overripe cucumbers and scrapes all of the seeds out and uses just the good part for her relish. She looks in her spice cabinet and gets out the cinnamon and ground cloves and salt.
The old time families always ate a lot of relishes, especially in the winter. They had special relish plates or pickle dishes for their Piccalilli.
Love,
Connie
