Wow! A lot of great comments on yesterday’s post. Thank you! I’d love to hear from anyone that has tried any of these recipes after I’ve posted them to share their experiences making them. If you got a different result or hated something I liked, I’d love to know. If you discovered a better way to do something, let me know that.
Now on to today’s recipe.
This is a recipe I found when I was originally putting together the cookbook for grandma’s birthday. I had planted 4 cucumbers in my garden that year and was amazed at the number of cucumbers I got. 
I experimented with lacto-fermentation (I had one batch work and one that didn’t), I made a variety of pickles from one of my books. I experimented with adding a chunk of horseradish and some hot peppers in with the cucumbers. The hope was that somewhere along the way, I would find the pickle recipe that would make all other pickle recipes seem insignificant and like a waste of cucumbers.
Not a single one of my experiments was as successful or eaten as quickly as these bread and butter pickles. (Except for that one jar of spicy pickles that made it into a batch of dill pickle dip). I ended up gifting a jar of these pickles to my grandma and grandpa hoping for it to trigger days of yore or something like that. I don’t think it really worked, but they really are awesome pickles. 
You can get all fancy with these and use a crinkle cutter, but to get even slices, I usually use a mandoline. 
The Recipe:
Bread and Butter Pickles
4 qts sliced cucumbers
6 medium onions
Slice cucumbers (do not pare). Add 1/3 cup salt and cover with ice cubes. Mix thoroughly, let stand 3 hours. Drain well.
Combine:
5 cups sugar
1 ½ tsp celery salt
2 TB mustard seed
1 ½ tsp turmeric
3 cups vinegar
Pour syrup over cucumbers. Heat to boiling and seal in pints. (As always use safe canning practices. If you have questions, there are great websites out there.)
If you like this recipe, check out Apple Marmalade, Cabbage Salad, and Deviled Hot Dogs.
Grandma Funk was known in the family for these. Every year she made gallons and they were on the table at every meal whether it was a party or just Grandma, Diane, our cousin Colleen and I having a bologna sandwich in the kitchen. The dish was always empty when it headed to the sink. Her other famous pickle was spiced crab apple pickles. Do you have that recipe?
I have a recipe for pickling liquid, but not one precisely for crab apples. Did you know that true crab apples are harder to find now than they used to be? Most crab apple trees are now the decorative variety. They are still edible, but not like the crab apples you are thinking of.