pickling(!!)

Okay so I've been pickling veggies the past couple weekends and I'm obsessed. I have always loved anything pickled and ever since my fast I've been hyper vigilant about everything I consume and basically eating the same thing every day until my blood work tomorrow. I eat spicy pickled things every day starting with this viral spicy carrot salad that I first saw from this creator Danielle on Tiktok (@dzaslavsky) and then everyone started making their own variations and now I have mine. It's funny because I was already reading about a different carrot salad online for gut health and carrots were one of the raw veggies I allowed myself to munch on when I was fasting and now literally without fail every night around 4-5pm I NEED raw carrots. Funny how our habits form so easily. And also funny how the universe is literally an algorithm for where your attention goes. Googling carrot salads you say?? Okay here's 200 on your tiktok feed. I love it.

So far I've pickled carrots, persian cucumbers (pickles), red onion and beets. (lalalaloveee beets 4ever) and here are my recipes. Very easy and you must do it immediately because delish.

Carrots:

Get a big ass salad bowl, a mandolin or julienne slicer (amazon) for the good shreds and shred 10 carrots. Crush 10 cloves of garlic and add that to the bowl. Then add 2ish tsp of salt (pickling salt or kosher sea salt), 5 tbsp of white vinegar, 7 tbsp of avocado or good olive oil, 2ish tsp of cayenne pepper and a good dollop of hot honey. Mix it all together with your hands (I order surgical gloves from amazon so I don't stain my manicure! hello!!) make sure it's all mixed in good and jar it over night. Everything is kinda eyeballed and I add and taste but you know how it goes. I made 2 jars yesterday because it is literally so good I finish a full jar in 2 days.

Pickles:

Slice a pack (ish - basically you just wanna fill your jar) of organic persian cucumbers like little coins. Add those to your jar with some fresh dill. I put a couple decent sized bunches - I loveee dill. Then in a pot add 1 cup water, 1 cup white vinegar, 1 tbsp of salt, some black & rainbow peppercorns, about 1 tbsp of hot honey, crush 3-5 garlic cloves, a chunk of ginger, and about a tsp of mustard seed (I accidentally added too much and threw them out halfway through the week they just got toooo intense). Heat up the water and vinegar with all the spices, garlic, ginger, honey etc so that everything dissolves (except for the peppercorns of course) and leave it out until it cools before pouring it onto all your cukes or you won't have nice crunchy pickles. And voila.

Beets:

I had a bunches of beets I dunno maybe 6? Boiled them until I could easily stick a fork through them (beets take so mf long to get soft omg but then I thought it was cool like oh this is a winter vegetable and it grows in the freezing ground how cool).. anyway, once those are cool slice the skin off w/ a knife (or do it before - this is just how I did it) then add those to a jar. Boil 1 cup water and 1 cup vinegar. Again, add salt and some hot honey and you can add that right to the jar even if the water is still hot because the beets can handle it. 24 hours later - bomb.com

Red Onion:

Slice a couple medium sized red onions and add to the jar. Again, boil 1 cup water, 1 cup white vinegar, salt and hot honey. (listen I'm sure there are many variations but this was just perfect for me) heat up on the stove to dissolve everything and add to the jar. The trick to getting that really bright hot pink color is adding a chunk of the beets you just used to the jar overnight and it will dye everything gorgeously. I have been adding those pickled onions to every single thing I can think of and eating them straight out of the jar my mouth is actually watering while typing this.

Anyway, ENJOY!! I love the process too, it's so meditative and I mean the colors. How can you not love. xx L