Refrigerator pickles

Sometimes you can find fresh pickling cucumbers at produce stands in August. One of the fastest ways to make dill pickles is in the fridge-- no canning, boiling or brining. Here's an easy recipe:

3 cups white vinegar
1 & 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp each: mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, red pepper flakes, black peppercorns
3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 fresh dill head, or 1/2 tsp. dried dill weed
Pickling cucumbers
Put the vinegar, salt and sugar in a pan, and simmer until dissolved. Put all the dried spices in the bottom of a clean jar along with the sliced garlic. Wash the cucumbers and stack them in. You can also slice them in half or make rounds.
Pour the hot vinegar-sugar mixture over the pickles. (If you shop at Costco, you'll recognize the empty marinated artichoke jar.) The vinegar mixture in this recipe was just enough to cover the pickles to the top.

The pickles are "done" after a few days in the refrigerator, and they will keep a month or so. The only way to go wrong is if the cucumbers are bitter (and this is not your fault.) If you slice them first, you can take a little bite of each one before you put it in the jar. Or just live dangerously, and see what you get in a few days.