Cucumbers are taking over my backyard and are plotting to invade the house and seize the TV remote.  In an effort to foil their evil plans, I have been creeping up on them and picking them.  I think this is just making them angrier, but so far they’ve said nothing.

Flush with cucumbers, I am compelled to make pickles.  But as I am impatient, churlish, vain, tedious, photo-sensitive and did I mention impatient and repetitive, I make instant pickles.  I am also imprecise, because when I say “instant” I actually mean “at least six hours”, which is still pretty darned quick for pickles.

Instant pickles are very easy to make, which suits me because I am also indolent on top of being vain, and repetitive.

To make a batch of fridge pickles, you must acquire a complicated, expensive and exotic new piece of kitchen equipment.  It is called a pickle press.  These devices come in a variety of sizes, are plastic, robust and easy to acquire from a variety of web-based retailers, including one named after a violent, one-breasted woman.  I think her name was Betty Ultraplush Velour Shinbone McGee, but that would have made an awful name for a web-based retailer.

While the wheels of commerce turn and a pickle press is dispatched to your home, I will share my fridge pickle formula with you.  Please note that all other such “recipes” are bound to disappoint you, so don’t even bother looking at any of them.  They were written by people who want you to sigh and wail and buy their fridge pickles instead.  I, on the other hand, wish you to succeed at making them on your own.  I also want to sell pickle presses.

DRY INGREDIENTS

1. One half cup of granulated sugar.
2. One tablespoon of salt.
3. One teaspoon of yellow mustard seeds.
4. One teaspoon of celery seeds.

WET AND WET-ISH INGREDIENTS

1. One cup of white vinegar.
2. Three cucumbers of a moderate size - not too small and not too big.  Medium, actually.  You want to have fridge pickles, not a single fridge pickle.  And if you have too many cucumbers of too large a size, you would need to recalibrate this entire ridiculous recipe, and you don’t want to do that.  Do you.  Plus that would be hard, and would require that you use maths, and who knows how to do maths anymore.  Not me, no sirree.
3. One large red onion, or two medium red onions, or five absolutely darling little red onions, aren’t they just the cutest things you’ve ever seen, it’s a shame to cut them up, but that’s what you grew them for isn’t it.
4. One knob of ginger.

OTHER STUFF

1. A saucepan.
2. A spoon.
3. A source of heat, preferably a stove fueled by gas, or electricity, or fusion.
4. Measuring spoons.
5. A measuring cup.
6. A knife, preferably a sharp one.  A monofilament blade would be neat, or a light saber, but I doubt you have those.  
7. A cutting board.
8. A pickle press.
9. A sealable plastic storage container.  Make sure it’s clean, and free of holes.
10. A source of clean running water.  I hear “sinks” are a great place to start looking for this item.
11. A slotted spoon.
12. A refrigerator, preferably one that is plugged in and cold inside.
13. A pirate hat.
14. A parrot.
15. A member of the human race to perform the steps required to make this recipe, or a sufficiently gifted chimp or other uplifted bipedal mammal with opposable thumbs and an appreciation for parrots and vegetable menacing.

NOTE - IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ALL OF THE ABOVE-MENTIONED INGREDIENTS, GIVE UP NOW.  REALLY.  DON’T BOTHER.  YOU WILL JUST BE FRUSTRATED AND FEEL EVEN EMPTIER THAN YOU DO RIGHT NOW.

NOTE - IF YOU DO HAVE ALL OF THE ABOVE-MENTIONED INGREDIENTS, CONGRATULATIONS.  YOU ARE ONE OF AN EXCLUSIVE CADRE OF INDIVIDUALS WHO MAY CONTINUE.

YOUR INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOW

1. Combine all of the dry ingredients and the one cup of white vinegar in a saucepan, stir then up with your spoon, and apply heat to it until the sugar and salt dissolve completely.  You will need to do some stirring as well as apply heat to the saucepan to accomplish this: your “heat vision” will not work, and the fireplace is a bad choice as well, as is the microwave, the surface of the sun, an engine block or a sleeping Heat Miser’s stomach.  Try the stove.  I suspect you have one.

Careful!  Do not let this substance boil or bad things will happen.  Stir it often.  You can watch True Blood later.  Gosh, that Sookie is quite an interesting character.

2. While step number 1 is underway, procure a knife, a cutting board and a pirate hat.  Put the pirate hat on your head.  Now locate your running water and a parrot.  Put the parrot on your shoulder.  Wash the cucumbers in the water.  Transfer the cucumbers to the cutting board.  Take up your knife and menace the cucumbers.  Really give them the business.  Slice a quarter inch off the end of each cucumber while saying the letter “R” loudly and menacingly.  Discard these stumps, as they are the source of all that is awful about cucumbers.  Now slice the de-stumped cucumbers into uniform half-inch round slices.  When they are all sliced, salute them with your knife, then place them in the pickle press.

3. Take up the onions and juggle them.  If you have chosen to use one large onion, this will be easy.  If you have a variety of small onions, you better be a darned good juggler or they will end up on the floor where the cat will chew on them.  Remove the dry outer layer of the onion (or onions) after you have activated their flavors by juggling them (bet you didn’t know about that!) and remember to de-stump the onion(s), as onion stumps share the same evil properties as cucumber stumps.   You will have noted that I did not instruct you to menace the onions.  Silly person, onions require no menacing.  Slice the onions into uniform quarter-inch round slices.  When they are all slices, salute them with your knife, then place them in the pickle press.

4. There is no step 4.

5. For G_d’s sake, don’t let that vinegar mixture boil!  

6. Take up the knob of ginger and consider its rough outer skin.  This is not the tasty part of ginger, and must be removed.  Using all of your pirate skills, trim the nasty outer skin of the ginger knob with your knife until only the pale yellow inner flesh remains.  Try to ignore the screams of the ginger, it’s a big baby.  Menacing the ginger only lightly, slice it into uniform quarter-inch slices, which will likely not be round, but instead some sort of irregular polygon.  When they are all slices, salute them with your knife, then place them in the pickle press.

7. Pay off your parrot, remove the hat, clean up your workstation, and pour the now-melted vinegar mixture - all of it - slowly, as if it spills it will stick to you like napalm and that’s no fun - I’m sorry, where was I…oh, that’s right, pour it over the vegetables in the pickle press.

Note - I suspect you will have figured out that you should have taken the top off of the pickle press in order to put the vegetables inside it.  If you did not, clean up the mess, and start over.

8. Place the top of the pickle press on to the bottom of the pickle press, and screw the pressing-plate down until it is snug against the vegetables.  Put it in the refrigerator.  Clean up everything, if you leave a mess, someone will know you’ve been making fridge pickles, and they will want some.  The parrot won’t talk, as you will have paid for its silence, and as parrots are honorable creatures, you can rest easy.  

A SCIENTIFIC INTERLUDE

Through a process too complex for words, the salt in the hot vinegar mixture is going to suck a whole lot of moisture out of the cucumbers and the onions and even the ginger.  If you listen carefully by pressing your ear to the refrigerator door, you can hear the slurping sound of this process at work.  Through a process of equal complexity, flavor from the vinegar mixture will infuse the cucumbers and onions over time.

AND WE’RE BACK

What this means is that over the next six hours you must visit your fridge pickles-in-sic-transit-gloria-mundi and screw down the pressing-plate every hour or so as the cucumbers and onions give up their liquid essences.  You need to do this.  It’s required.

9. Any time between six and twelve hours after you’ve started this whole sordid adventure you must remove the pickle press from the refrigerator and transfer the vegetables to your storage container with your slotted spoon.  Mix up the now-cooled vinegar mixture a la cucumber and onion water in the pickle press to stir up the mustard and celery seeds, then pour it over the pickles until it is just about to overflow.  Cover the pickles, and place them back into the refrigerator as they want to get back to that nice dark place and continue their plotting.

10. As the spirit moves you, you may eat these fridge pickles.  Eat them, eat them, you will see, you will eat them in a tree.  You will eat them in the house, you will eat them with a mouse.  You will eat them here and there, you will eat them anywhere.

11. Don’t forget to clean the pickle press.