Zucchini Pickles

Okay, I have confirmed it - I no longer need to buy copious amounts of cucumbers to make pickles.  I tried zucchini pickles - both dills as well as bread and butter and they came out great!

I am sold. The key seems to be harvesting the zucchinis while they are still small, which of course can be difficult as zucchini can grow so quickly! I picked them at 4-8" which worked out well. Some, which were too small on the Sunday before I went away to work for the week were humongous by Friday. That is okay, I froze a bunch of grated and blanched zucchini in baggies for making zucchini bread etc. at a later time.

While I did look at some specific zucchini pickle recipes, for the most part, they didn't appear to be any different than the cucumber recipes, so for the bread and butter pickles, I used my favourite recipe from bernardin.ca

At a Crossroads....

I am at a crossroads. Many, if not most of you, will have been here too. I am here late in the game.

1. My graduate degree is pretty much finished. I submitted my MRP (masters research paper/project aka major paper) If I could just get my advisor to answer my emails, probably I would have been completely finished by now. That is a long digression that I won't bore you with. The point is, I finished my courses last spring and my major paper has been written. I may post it here, not sure yet. If not, I will post a link to it as I usually use my profile on http://www.academia.edu/ to post this sort of thing -  basically an academic version of facebook. Here is a sneak-peak:

You will notice that is isn't the typical "paper" - more like a sort of monograph. There is nothing I hate more than pointless papers sitting on a shelf. Might as well make something useful. This paper's usefulness has not yet been proven, but it is a start - I attempted to make a piece of work that could be used for something.

2. I also had a short term contract working as a development review planner for the County of Wellington - that is over too. It was great, while it lasted. I learned a lot and I worked with amazing people. I couldn't have asked for a better four months. Some might think of it as an internship - low pay, lots of work.

But now, I am supposed to be a big girl. School is over; the real work now begins.

Over the summer, while I was working on my MRP and my job, AND commuting back and forth between Meaford, Guelph and Kitchener (I was staying through the week with my mom in Kitchener), I applied to a few planner jobs. I had three interviews. Well, four since I had a second interview for one of the positions.

I heard two definitive turn downs.  But I did have an offer. There is some negotiating happening right now. In a few minutes, I will be hearing how the offer played out last night at the council (the local government of elected officials, for those of you who have a different type of local government).

Wish me luck.  It is time to see if all this school stuff can pay for itself. ;-P