Tuesday, December 09, 2008

My thoughts on: Pickles

This final topic that I forgot about was submitted by Ashley.


Pickles are intensely flavored and can make or break a meal. I tend to lean toward the more mild kind and generally only really like dill. Dill is a marvelous flavor but I dislike most other kinds of pickles. At any restaurant, it is standard to receive a pickle with your burger and fries, but I usually give it to Sean because he likes them and I do not. It feels weird to bite into and the taste usually displeases me. But sometimes a baby dill hits the spot.

Once upon a time my sister and I had the rare opportunity/curse of a lifetime to clean out the old jars that had been holding contents from, I'm pretty sure, the Canning Escapade of '35. We were to dump them into a big bowl and then dump it out back. I was unable to recognize the contents in these jars, by the look of them. They were so old and decayed & fermented. The smell told me what it was though: Pickled pungence. I don't know what the fruit or vegetable was but it was 100% NAST. So foul. I needed (but did not have) a doctor's mask to prevent from heaving into the giant metal bowl. I did not hurl but could have, and could have done it without being caught because i could just mix the puke in with the rest of the pickled discharge and the appearance and smell would blend right in. p.s. discharge is one of the worst words ever. So yeah. That was a fun memory and by fun I mean I will never forgive my mother.

Otherwise, remember the Sweet Pickles books?


I do not love sweet pickles but I do love those books.

6 comments:

Joel said...

I used to slice dill pickles thinly and eat them with a toothpick. I would drink milk with it, because for some reason the taste combination was great to me. Bu these days I can't seem to find a dill pickle that doesn't make me pass out from the insane garlic content.

Scoresbys said...

I vote for mucous being one of the worst words ever. And mucous discharge probably wins for worst combination of words. Now, if you had pickle and mucous and discharge all together. . .

Lindsey said...

I love those books! They are the ones with the alphabet in the front with all the characters with matching first letters!!! Yes, gotta love those books. Thanks for the happy memory of childhood.

sarah said...

jen, you make my day happier. oh, if your mother only knew how much she scarred you. i think i will make my kids perform a similar pukacious task...ha ha

)en said...

Aw, that is so nice. :) No doubt Dot has no idea how traumatic that day was. I can still smell it. Ash does, I bet. I wonder where she is.

"Pickled mucous discharge" = grosses combination of words in existence, but also something that made me laugh.

pickles & milk is kind of making me want to heave right now.

Linds--yes! I love them. I want the whole set.

Ashley said...

I'm here! I'm here! I DO remember the smell and the sight of the unidentifiable food product that made up the disgusting sludge. So gross, but such fond memories, right?

And the books. The memory of them is very vague in my brain, but just seeing them again took me WAAAAY back. So crazy.