The Great Cucumber Catastrophe of 2025: Part 1
There are moments in life that test you. For some, it’s climbing a mountain or running a marathon. For me? It’s staring down three dozen cucumbers on my kitchen counter and realizing I have officially run out of excuses.
I’ve always been terrified of canning. In my mind, it’s this mystical, slightly dangerous process—part science experiment, part gamble with botulism. It feels like something only the most competent homemakers do, the ones who wear linen aprons and have root cellars lined with jars that look like they belong in a magazine. My nana was that person. I am not that person.
But the cucumbers don’t care. They just keep coming, like the pasta pot in Strega Nona, except instead of golden strands of comfort food, I’ve got a countertop covered in cold, bumpy green guilt. And let’s be honest: no one is clamoring for extra cucumbers. People will fight you for a bowl of fresh pasta. A surplus of cukes? You can’t even give them away without feeling like you’re inconveniencing someone.
Here’s the thing: I’ve been here before. Not with cucumbers, exactly, but with white sauce. Back in 2010, it was the Great White Sauce Debacle—a battle that taught me that sometimes the simplest kitchen tasks can be the most humbling. What should have been a silky béchamel turned into a lumpy disaster (twice), and I swore off white sauce. But eventually, I went back, I tried again, and I won.
And if I can conquer white sauce, I refuse to be beaten by cucumbers.
So, here I am, googling “how not to kill your family while canning pickles” and wondering when exactly I signed up for this. I blame the garden. It seemed like such a romantic idea back in the spring, one of my favorite seasonal tasks, a few weeks before we found out I was already two months pregnant with #2. Get some plants, watch them grow, and then casually pull vegetables from the earth like some sort of wholesome pioneer woman. Fast forward to August and I’m questioning all of my life choices while standing over a giant stockpot on one of the hotter days this summer.
The thing is, deep down, I know why I’m doing this. There’s something satisfying—empowering, even—about taking what you’ve grown and preserving it for later. It feels like a small act of defiance against the chaos of the world, a way of saying, “I’ve got this. I can handle cucumbers. I can handle life.” And in this moment, we all need small wins, small victories.
