My 19-year-old son James loves the Mrs. Wages® pickles so I made a point of making them for him this year. We purchased pickles at a church sale for several years and didn't know what made them different. (He didn't prefer the ones I usually made!) I finally determined it was the Mrs. Wages® mix, so he was very excited that we could finally make our own!

This recipe won first place in Mrs. Wages® Pickling Contest at the 2014 Indiana State Fair. Chuck says the key is to “chunk” up the vegetables. “It’s marvelous and you can eat it the next day!”

"I’ve won first place for my pickles in the past. The secret to blue ribbon canning is using ingredients right out of the garden and processing it quickly to preserve that taste.”

I came up with the idea to do radish pickles because we had a bumper crop of radishes this year in our garden, and you can only eat so many raw radishes you know? I like dill with radishes, and I've used the Mrs. Wages® Quick Process Dill Pickle Mix for a number of years to make dilled carrot pickles, so I thought I'd give radishes a try. I found the recipe needed a little sugar to keep the vinegar-radishy-ness from being too harsh.

I like my pickles a bit spicy, so I have added the red pepper flakes. The judge said she could definitely taste them. I’ve been using Mrs. Wages® for the past five or six years, and I love the pickle and salsa mixes. I’m a beginner at pickling, but enjoy it. I get my cucumbers from local farmer’s markets.