There are many old family recipes around that have fallen by the wayside over the years due to safety concerns, advances in research, the discovery of new bacteria, and the fact that vinegar used to be much stronger than it is today. Without seeing the exact recipe there is no way to know if your grandmother's recipe was safe or if you were just really lucky. They may have been a fermented pickle packed in water and salt with no vinegar and if the proper amount of salt was used - no problem - except that by today's standards once they finished fermenting they would need to be 1) canned in sealed jars or 2) stored in the refrigerator. Or they may have been a brined pickle (based on the info you gave there is no way to tell) and if so then their safety all depended on how much vinegar she used or if it was diluted with water and how cool the cellar was etc. but by today's standards they would need to be canned into sealed jars or immediately stored in the refrigerator and would have a limited storage life. There are modern recipes available to do them either way available from NCHFP and the size of the cucumber is your choice although it will affect the finished quality - smaller "pickling" cukes giving the best quality. Hope this helps. Dave

While the button top lids aren't generally recommended, especially for low-acid foods, when using the button top lids you process the jars in a BWB for 10 mins just as you would with the 2 piece lids. The vacuum results from the BWB processing. Once removed from the BWB and cooled the button should pop just as the standard 2 piece lids do. But I'm curious. Why is it you can't use the standard jelly canning jars and and the standard 2 piece lids? They ship just as easily as any specialty jars will. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP How to can jams and jellies

Here's another way - I have a set of nice canisters with good gaskets, and they go with my Corelle collection. But you have a point, they aren't big enough to hold a whole 5# bag of flour or sugar. For the flour, I fill the canister and then put the rest in a gallon sized Ziploc and store it in the freezer. We fill the sugar canister, the sugar bowl, and then put the rest of the bag in a gallon sized Ziploc and store it in the pantry. The freezer keeps bugs out. I don't have a canister at all for my bread flour or other flours, so I store those in Ziploc bags in the freezer. Before I bake a loaf of bread, I take out enough bread flour to let it come to room temperature. I also freeze my yeast - a tip I learned on FidoNet's Cooking forum, years ago. I buy the big jar, dump it in a Ziploc bag, and stick it in one of the shelves in the freezer. DonnaR/CA

I recently bought two kinds of liners from Lowes. (to make my old cabinets look less worn out! One was the clear liner that is ribbed and it seems very sturdy. Put it in my silverware drawer, and pots and pans drawer, etc. I also got maybe a Rubbermaid product that is printed and kind of cushy. I put it in less heavy duty areas - my towel drawer, under spices etc. I was surprised to read that you can wash it in the washing machine if it gets dirty. wow. Here is my tip though. I have always cut liners by just showing the stuff in there, creasing it where it meets the wall then cutting it with scissors Surrpisingly time consuming, and not very perfect. This time I measured my drawers and cut it with my rotary cutter and mat and rulers I used for quilting. It was so quick and easy and fits perfectly. Even the ribbed clear plastic cut with ease. Now I want to do my bathrooms too.