Autumn pleasures

I've been planting, picking, preserving and pickling with the zeal of peter piper. It's a Pickering family thing, we like our food like our humour, home grown and tart! My maternal grandparents pantry was an open invitation of jars, with no holds barred. I remember my sister eating lemon curd from the jar with a spoon (her favourite). And her day-glo vomit.
I remember the finesse required to make and eat a pickled red cabbage and salted peanut sandwich (my favourite). Press the peanuts into the soft white belly of a door stopper crust, pile on the cabbage, indent the lid (also a crust), put it on top, roll up your sleeves, put your elbows in a bowl and enjoy!
Anarchic grandparental feeding practices aside, i have always wondered if our Pickering preference for pickles was genetic. Perhaps we have a tendency to low sodium which we unconsciously corrected by scarfing pickled onions by the jar in preference to popcorn when watching a movie (my mother). More probably it was the copious cigarette smoking of previous generations which necessitated a strong flavoured food to remind the damaged taste buds that flavour exists.
Either way, whilst i no longer eat oxo cubes or rhubarb raw (we begged for them like most kids do for sweets) and now channel my thirst for the tart through the more sophisticated route of a weekly ploughmans lunch, it's such an essential part of my identity that, in addition to annual bouts of preserving mania (we have a years supply of jam, passata, pickled onions and tomato relish so far) i was determined to indoctrinate Claud to the 'way of the pickle' early. A baby-led-weaning child she first ate a pickle, a gherkin, aged 8 months, and she ate it with relish i'm very proud to report. Now, aged two, if you ask her what she'd like to eat she invariably shrieks "OLIVES" before having to settle for what ever is on the menu that day. Yep, she's a Pickering (if not in name) hurrah!
Anyhow, this was meant to be a brief post to say as most of the produce in my garden is now in a jar i'll be back to normal blogging frequency soon. Sooner still if someone can suggest a way to preserve cucumbers or grapes?