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The Best Bread and Butter Pickles! I love the flavor of bread and butter pickles- that sweet and spicy mixture is just perfect to my taste!  My favorite part is the onions, so I usually add a little more than it calls for here, but you can be flexible.  Beware:  an old wives tale says that the pickles will take on the personality of the person preparing them.  So watch your mood- unless you like your pickles sour! 1 gallon cucumbers 8 small onions 2 green peppers (optional, but good) ½ cup salt cracked ice 5 cups sugar ½ teaspoon tumeric ½ teaspoon ground cloves 2 tablespoons whole mustard seeds 2 tablespoons whole celery seeds 5 cups vinegar (or more if needed to almost cover pickles) 6-8 pint jars, lids, and rings

1.  Slice cucumbers, onions and peppers into very thin slices.  2.  Cover with salt.  Cover completely with cracked ice and stir.  3.  Top with a weighted lid. (I put a plate on top that just fits the container and then weight it down with a heavy can, etc. on top of that.)  Allow to stand for 3 hours. 4.  Prepare the Jars by cleaning and covering with boiling water.  Boil for 10 minutes, then keep hot until ready to fill. 5.  Drain cucumbers, but DO NOT RINSE. 6.  Combine remaining ingredients and cook until the sugar dissolves.  7.  Pour over the cucumbers, bring to a boil. 8.  Put in sterile jars and seal while still hot. Hand tighten lid.  No additional processing is needed.  9.  Put jars upside down to cool.  Any jar that does not seal should be put in the fridge for immediate use. NOTES:  Your cucumbers should be fresh.  If they have been standing around too long, the pickles will have holes in them.  If this happens to you, your cucumbers weren’t as fresh as they could have been.  (You can still eat them.)  Its best to pick your cucumbers as close to pickling time as possible, but don’t let them get too big- you want the small to medium sized cucumbers.  The large ones are all seeds.