Love cannot be contained in a jar, but bad memories can.
Begin with cucumbers that probably stayed on the vine too long, cucumbers that have begun to yellow and look swollen, phallic and diseased. Slice them into medallions that will never, ever be the right thickness or be close enough to the same size to homogeneously pickle.
After imperfectly slicing approximately five pounds of cucumbers and one white onion, mix them together and salt generously with kosher salt–although Aunt Carol Anne will make anti-Semitic remarks while you do so–and covering the mixture generously in ice, go into the bathroom with a pint mason jar full of the sickly pink wine from the box in the garage refrigerator. Drink it in no more than three gulps.
Mix in a large pot a pinch of ground cloves, a handful of allspice berries, three cups of red wine vinegar, and six cups of white vinegar. Ignore Aunt Carol Anne’s colorful suggestions as to what profitable hygienic uses you might put the white vinegar. As the mixture makes its way towards boiling, fill another pint mason jar with the pink box wine. Filch one of your Aunt Carol Anne’s Benson & Hedges Ultra Lights. Break the filter off. Smoke and drink in the backyard–there among the crabgrass, concrete statuary, and white turdlets from Aunt Carol Anne’s teacup Pomeranian, Mister Motorboat–and consider only these actions, separate from everything and everyone else.
Repeat.
Once the mixture on the stove top has reached a boil, pack the jars up to one inch shy of the rim with the cucumber and onion mixture. Ladle the pickling solution to fill the jar up to one quarter inch of the rim. Wipe the rim and place the lid upon the jar. Repeat until cucumber and onion mixture are gone, or until you no longer trust yourself around hot liquids and the castigating tongue of your Aunt Carol Anne. Do not consider what household cleaners you might put into her half of the jars of pickles. She will not eat them in any case. Aunt Carol Anne hates pickles of any kind, and loathes especially bread and butter pickles. This process is not in any way about tastily preserving the bounty of the earth or any such horseshit, but you will not understand this for years.
Pickles should be consumed within one year of canning.
