A preserving food thought.

I have an irritating habit of rambling on about things not worth talking about over meals, which I suspect is causing my wife to wish she'd kept her earplugs in from the night before, permanently.

Typically, I say nothing to start with and just stare blankly at a random spot on the wall while bovinely chewing mouthfuls of what the packet describes as "museli" but which looks a lot like chicken mash to me.  Same ingredients, minus peas and grit.  After half a pint of tea I then feel a caffeine kick and my mouth just starts up on it's own accord without any connection to a brain, and K's eyes glaze over ten seconds later.

Anyway, I had the idea to make pickled cucumbers and had them steeping in a brine on the table.  I was to drain them and put them into vinegar with some dill, etc, and suddenly it occurred to me that after a whole summer of eating cucumbers, it would be very nice indeed to spend some time without seeing one of the bitter, tough, seedy, tasteless buggers again.  These days there are enough varieties of veg to have something fresh every day of the year, so why preserve something you've been eating for months so you can keep eating it when it's not in season?  Why not have a few special preserves of very nice things (like habanero chilli  chutney) to add to a meal of seasonal items as a condiment instead of eating another bag of frozen beans?  That way you come to appreciate new season's veg, having not had it for months from a freezer bag or something.

It is thoughts like these that make K go to work very early indeed, and work late into the night.