Thursday Kitchen Cupboard - One Recipe, Two Week Post

First, thanks to The Gardener of Eden for hosting Kitchen Cupboard Thursday.  I'm getting bunches of tips and ideas from fellow gardeners on what to do with the harvests.   I'm feeling the same pain as everyone else right now and am super-busy trying to keep up with everything.  This week starts the process for something that hasn't been made since my grandmother passed away many years ago and everyone in the family is eager to taste it again:  Chow Chow.  This is a pickled vegetable recipe that the old-timers came up with (I think) to use up too much produce from the garden.  It has numerous variations world-wide and cultures adapt a recipe to their growing and eating habits.  This recipe, is Pennsylvania Dutch style and includes lots of cucumbers and cabbage.  I'm finding out it's quite the task; thus, it gets the honors of a two-part posting.  This week, you get the recipe and next week, you get a picture of the finished product.  Yesterday, I harvested everything I need (proud to say I had it all except the cauliflower and cabbage) and today I'm starting the cutting up and preparing process.  Some, not all, of the vegetables need pre-cooked and that's part of the art (IMHO) of making good Chow Chow:  finding the perfect cooked texture for all the vegetables, yet have them all ready to go into the jars at the same time.  So some require pre-cooking, keeping in mind they will be mixed with all the other vegetables and heated for 20-30  minutes additional cooking time.  You also don't want mush, so the cooking is minimal. This is truly a challenge (for me).  So here's the recipe and I'm headed back to the kitchen to continue the prep.