Yes, I’m still here!!! I know it’s been months since I’ve posted on this blog, but I’m hoping to get started up again here soon. As I’ve mentioned before, I struggle with depression—and now that I’m on a medication for my psoriasis that exacerbates symptoms of depression, I’ve been struggling more than ever. The good thing, though, is that both the medication for the psoriasis and the anti-depressant I’m on to try to balance me out both have “loss of appetite” as a major side effect. And I’ve experienced that to the effect of about fifty pounds lost in the last eight months. However, rather than being a passive participant, I’m ready to start actively controlling my nutrition to make sure that I’m making healthy choices, not just losing weight in an unhealthy manner (because I’m allowing myself to eat whatever I want because I know I don’t eat enough during the day to get in a healthy amount of calories).

What Does That Have to Do with Leftover Pickle/Pepper Juice?
Nothing whatsoever. 🙂

Last week, there was a piece on Mental Floss enumerating several things that you can do with the juice that’s left over after you eat all of the pickles from a jar. (12 Uses for Pickle Juice.) One of the main suggestions is to slice fresh veggies and put them in the juice to pickle.

Because pickles are one of my go-to low-carb snacks—and because I and many others in my family are pickle addicts from childhood, I posted it to my Facebook wall. And we got into throwing around some ideas of things we can do with our leftover juice. I happened to mention that I also like to snack on Pepperoncini peppers and in addition to using the leftover (spicy) juice from those to dress greens with (spinach, turnip greens, mustard greens, etc.), I might try using it for pickling other veggies, too.

Well, today, I found myself with half of a 32-ounce jar of leftover pepproncini juice, while I still have some left from a previous jar to use for greens. So I decided it was time to put it to work.

Ingredients:

• Approx 16. oz. leftover pepperoncini juice in original (32 oz.) jar
• 1 tbsp. minced garlic (fresh or from jar)
• 2 tsp. dried dill weed
• 1 tsp. dried dill seed
• 2 tsp. kosher salt
• 8 to 12 mini (salad) cucumbers, sliced—enough to mostly fill jar
• white vinegar—enough to fill/top-off jar (I probably needed 1/2 to 3/4 cup)

Tools/Utensils Needed:

• knife
• mandoline, with blade set to thicker slice width
• measuring spoons

Directions:
Add garlic, dill weed, dill seed, and salt to juice in pepper jar. Make sure lid is sealed tightly and then shake vigorously to combine. Set aside.

Use knife to cut off non-stem end of cucumber. Slice using knife or mandoline into approx. 1/4-inch-thick rounds. Add slices to jar. Keep adding cucumbers to jar until only about 1″ of juice remains unfilled at the bottom of the jar. Fill jar almost to top of rim with vinegar. Again, make sure lid is secured tightly and then shake vigorously to ensure even distribution of cucumbers, herbs, and spices.

Store in fridge 1 to 2 days. Gently shake jar occasionally to keep everything stirred up. Pickles should then be ready to eat.

Now, because I’ve just done the “put it together” part of this recipe, I don’t know for sure how they’ll turn out. I’ll check back in several days with a follow up.