Over the July fourth holiday, we all headed to Flatrock. It’s a family tradition to bring all the cousins together for several days of roughin’ in the Pennsylvanian wilderness. Flatrock makes us all especially hungry for all the food.
As we shopped at Weiss market for lunch supplies, I was looking forward to the pickle aisle. I mean this is Pennsylvania, home to the infamous “Pickle on a Stick” that James ordered at a movie theatre so long ago. I was hoping for some kind of specialty Amish fare but this is Weiss… practitioners of triple plastic bagging. People leave the joint with fistfuls of climate change, and a few plastic bags pinned under their armpits for good measure.
Fortunately, I found a big jar of bread and butter pickles chips to add to the stockpile.
Back at camp, I come across Grandma lamenting why we would need such a giant jar of pickles “You like these?” Of course there’s no actual transcript of the conversation but I’m sure she said that. She was positive they wouldn’t get eaten. Technically we were only there for three nights and I kid you not, I had to buy a second huge jar during our stay. Every last tangy morsel was gone as we headed out the dirt road on our way to NYC.
Meanwhile this month in lockdown, the main staple the boys added to the grocery list was pickles. “Mom, don’t forget we need pickles!”
It’s a topic of many dinnertime conversations. We seem to find pickles make an excellent little side dish to just about every evening meal. And they’re a must for Nate’s lunchtime “stackers” or as I call them, cheese tacos. He’s decided he doesn’t like bread and so his latest lunches involve a piece of cheese filled with prosciutto and pickles. Fold it like a taco and voilà (said with more of a Spanish accent then French, of course).
For some reason, we regularly have conversations at the dinner table that go something like this:
“Can you pickle bread?”
“No.”
“How ’bout pasta?”
“No. It has to be harder. Like a vegetable.”
“Can you pickle carrots?”
“Yes.”
“Marshmallows?”
“No!”
It goes on and on.
Friday night someone asks, “So where does vinegar come from?”
And Nate chimes in, “I think from cows?”
And Jake says, “No, horses! It comes from horses.”