This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in IMAGES for August 5, 2021, East Bernard Express, East Bernard, Texas.
Every Monday I am “in a pickle.” I am faced with the challenge of generating a topic for my weekly newspaper column. Some tell me finding a topic shouldn’t be so difficult considering the extraordinary, even bizarre, things happening in the world today, from COVID permutations, to raging floods, to extreme heat waves, to fiery forest fires, to fiery politics!
But that’s just the point. More and more, I hate to listen to or read the daily news when I get up each morning; the morning news causes me to start off my day grumpy. So I search my iPad for some lighthearted news, like the police arresting an alligator for swimming nude, or just something pleasant, like a young boy catching the biggest fish ever caught in a lake.
In that frame of mind, I turned to my favorite light-hearted topic, “searching for, canning, and eating extraordinarily good pickles.” Like Mama used to make. When you’re in a pickle, find a good pickle, it’ll cheer you up!
Ever since Mama passed away and left us bereft of good, old-fashioned pickles, dill, sweet, and otherwise, I have worked at either finding or canning the perfect pickle, a la Mama. Yes, I know, I’ve written about this before, but each time, I find a little more to squeeze out of the pickles.
Over the years, I have discovered about 15 different kinds of pickles, Mama canning about half of them, and each kind with sub-categories. For example, under “sweet pickles,” there is found one of Mama’s tours de force, “bread and butter.” I have discovered these major kinds of pickles: dill, sweet, sweet/sour, cornichons, cinnamon, lime, Hungarian, Bavarian, North African, South African, Polish, German, Mexican refrigerator, escabeche (all vegetables pickled), and Norwegian.
My daughter from New York, has helped me in my search for truly delicious, pickled cucumbers which remind her of her Dime Box grandmother’s. As a vegan, my daughter has become an expert in discovering the exciting things you can do with vegetables to make them mouth-watering good. For example, the last time she was home, she made us one of the most delicious vegan hamburgers (another one of my favorite subjects) I have ever eaten. I think she said the “meat” patties were made from split peas and are as high in protein as a beef patty.
An army would not have been able to make my Mama from Dime Box travel to New York, but in spite of that fact, she and my daughter were a lot alike. Mama would not have even known the word “vegan,” but except for her great love of homemade koch Kase (cooked cheese), she would have been happy being a vegan. How many times didn’t all of us hear her say at the dinner table, “I could make a meal off of just vegetables,” and she often did. She ate very little meat and always focused on her astonishingly good vegetable cuisine. No doubt the reason she and my father had one of the largest vegetable gardens in Dime Box.
Like my mother, my daughter doesn’t see vegetables as just an afterthought to be served with a coveted meat dish. My mother would have never opened a can of carrots, but would have cooked garden-fresh carrots in a delectable, candied sauce. Vegetables were the delight of each meal.
My daughter’s focus on veggies, like my mother’s, includes centering on the creation of scrumptious relish trays. When I was growing up, the relish tray of pickles, pickled onions, pickled beets, etc., appeared on the table at every meal except breakfast. Consequently, pickles (about 6 different varieties at different times) were eaten twice a day. You can see why Mama canned so many pickles and why I still crave them so much. But they have to have the right taste! No one in my family would ever say, “A pickle is a pickle is a pickle.”
At the beginning of the summer, for my birthday my daughter gave me a pickling kit, which included numerous packages of pickling mix. Since June, I have been experimenting with the mix, which is the best blend of spices and herbs I have ever come across. The results have been very positive as I have tried it with various vinegars. The mix package calls for plain white vinegar, but I found balsamic to be tastier. However, I do not like that balsamic turns the cucumbers and onions an ugly brown, and there is a strong balsamic taste. This week I am experimenting with rice vinegar (4.6 percent acidity), hoping to come up with the perfect pickle.
See! I did it! Whenever you’re in a pickle, just write about pickles!
-o-
Ray Spitzenberger is a retired WCJC teacher, a retired LCMS pastor, and author of two books, Open Prairies and It Must Be the Noodles.