Y’all need to know you almost didn’t get a picture of these spicy beans and sausage. Why? Because somewhere along the line my well-crafted, time-tested method for making sure nobody eats my bloggable food broke down this week! Let me tell you how that usually goes. Usually my family knows when I am making food to blog because it takes forever …

Refrigerator pickles. Because…summer! Because weird summer with varying temperatures, weird rainfall patterns, all of which have resulted (in my homestate of Maryland) in a bumper crop of pickling cucumbers. Because also…cold, crunchy and satisfying. Oh…and super low-cal! And lastly because…Nik has a deep-seeded fear of canning things (true fact: don’t ask me why, it’s a totally unfounded fear I’ll get …