On Wed, 09 May 2012 21:24:08 -0500, Melba's Jammin'
> wrote:

>In article <2012050918535666689-xxx@yyyzzz>, gtr > wrote:
>
>> On 2012-05-08 03:55:41 +0000, gtr said:
>>
>> > On 2012-05-08 03:17:18 +0000, Jean B. said:
>> >
>> >> I've never liked sweet pickles, and really hate it when someone puts
>> >> them in tuna salad or especially in potato salad since it pretty much
>> >> ruins it for me.
>> >>
>> >> Same here. Yuck! And it happens so often.
>> >
>> > Can't say I've ever had much of these. So I'm willing to try. I just
>> > pickled some green beans using Samuelsson's 3-2-1 pickle. 3 Cups
>> > water, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup vinegar. I've never put sugar in a pickling
>> > before.
>>
>> Okay, debrief:
>>
>> For reference, it's Marcus Samuelsson's pickling from his book Aquavit
>> as found various places including he http://tinyurl.com/7jcdf3y
>>
>> I only had raw organic cane sugar so its the shade of ice tea. Not so
>> appealing. The okra I picked up at the Indian market when I got the
>> falafel mix*. It was really pretty and had no age spots. Looked very
>> fresh and much better than I usually see in the non-ethnic
>> supermarkets. It is, though, the toughest most fibrous okra I may ever
>> have had. I'm beginning to doubt its species.
>>
>> Someone said I should parboil the green beans. Yes, I should have.
>>
>> So they were both failures. The pickling though, was pretty nice and
>> not hardly so sweet as I feared it might be. I wonder if that's due to
>> using unprocessed raw sugar being less pushy?
>>
>> I don't know if I'm violating a basic rule of pickling, but I intend to
>> fish out the string beans and okra and dunk a number of slabs of
>> cabbage and see what I get for my effort.
>>
>> * I know that falafel is not an Indian dish, but the store sells falafel mixes
>
>Are these for refrigerator storage? Current recommendations for the
>brine would have his too weak for safe waterbath processing ‹ it doesn't
>sound like processing was involved in this recipe; the folks who do the
>research now want us to use at least equal parts of vinegar and water,
>not more water than vinegar. My family's pickle recipe is two parts
>water to one part vinegar, though.

Hmm, when I make pickles I don't use any vinegar.