Golden Crunchy Pickled Onions

From yahoo group. Description states: "You should allow two weeks after preparing these before eating. They’ll be tasty right away, but they’ll be sublime if you exercise two weeks’ worth of patience!"

• Ready In: 45 mins
• Yields: 12 pints

Ingredients

• 6  lbs  small to medium mild onions
• 72  whole cloves
• 72  whole black peppercorns
• 12  teaspoons mustard, seed
• 6  teaspoons celery seeds
• 8  cups cider vinegar
• 2  cups water
• 4  cups sugar
• 2  teaspoons salt
• 6  teaspoons ground turmeric
• 1⁄2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

1. To each prepared pint jar add 6 cloves, 6 peppercorns, 1 tsp mustard seed and 1/2 tsp celery seed. Set aside.
2. Peel and slice the onions into 1/4″ thick rings. Separate the onion rings carefully and divide among the jars.
3. In a large nonreactive saucepan, stir together the vinegar, water, sugar, salt, turmeric and cinnamon over high heat. Heat the syrup to boiling and then allow it to simmer for 2 minutes.
4. Pour the hot liquid over the onion rings being sure to leave 1/4″ of headspace. Use a chopstick or skewer to remove air pockets that might be in the jars by running it along the inside wall of the jar. If needed, add more hot syrup to maintain the 1/4″ headspace.
5. Process jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Adjust time according to your altitude.