Heather Wright/The Independent

The well-worn recipe sits on the counter at the St. Matthew’s Parish Hall in Florence. It’s clear it has been photocopied from a photocopy; handed down from one church lady to another.

Today, the friend’s hands are busy chopping three boxes of cucumbers leftover from the visit of the Inn of the Good Shepherd Mobile Market the day before.

“We’re their last stop of the day,” says Lawrene Denkers, “so they very kindly give us things that are left, and they know that we will use it…We process it in some soup, or we cut them up into up and make things.”

When the mobile market had served the 12 families who are regular users, it left behind three boxes of cucumbers.  “Part of the church ladies creed is you can’t let anything go to waste,” says Denkers. So, the pickles were the obvious solution to the mound of vegetables without a home. 

The pickles, says Shirley Sewell, were first discovered when a bunch of guys from Florence went fishing. One of the wives, the late Dorothy Maynard, would send the pickles along each trip.

Soon, they became a staple of church suppers. “These pickles show up at funeral lunches and gatherings of any kind, like lunch and they’re gone. People love these things,” says Denkers as she slices a long English cucumber into thin rounds in less than a minute

Sewell now makes the pickles for special occasions. She doesn’t consult the faded recipe on the counter and is freewheeling with the ingredients; plopping more cucumbers and more red pepper into the bowl than the original recipe calls for.

“They’re very thin and they’re crisp and they’re sweetish,” she says as she stirs up the sugar and pickling salt used in the recipe. 

Sewell says they’re not difficult to make. “You don’t do anything to them. You just make them. You can eat them today, but there not as good today, like; you need to let them sit.”

Sewell, who also helps with the food bank, is happy to share her knowledge and suggested inviting people to the parish hall to help.

“We thought, you know, what, if we showed people the recipe, maybe that would help, too.”

So, the ladies put the word out on social media, inviting people to stop by on a Friday morning and learn how to make the famed pickles.

Just a handful of people were there, but everyone took home as many pickles as they wanted. Others were destined for the freezer to be served to the community paramedics who visit Florence to help with people’s medical needs. The ladies of St. Matthew’s serve the paramedics a meal before they head out of town – the pickles will be a part of that this summer. 

There will likely be more pickles made with leftover produce in the weeks to come and the ladies from the parish, who run a small food bank, plan to offer more cooking classes over the summer with the produce left by the mobile market.

“Whatever we get, we’re going …to say, ‘come we’ll show you how to do this.,” Sewell says. 

“Young people don’t want to spend the time (preparing the food) and they don’t have the equipment and they don’t have the space to keep the stuff.”

And, as the ladies do their part to help those in need in their corner of Lambton County, they also remember the neighbours who have sweet memories of the pickles.

Sewell planned to put some of the Freezer Cucumbers into a container and bring them down to the husband of the late Dorothy Maynard, knowing he would enjoy the reminder of his life.

If you’d like to join the ladies of St. Matthew’s Parish cooking class, they are held occasionally and publicized on social media the day before they’re held.