Cucumbers

Dr. Fred used to live in the area of 1st and Holly. While there, he shopped at a place named Pete's Fruit and Vegetables. Connected to this small neighbor grocery by a short hallway is butcher shop where they sell USDA prime in certain cuts. Then he moved from there. Fred used to complement the place highly.

But what does Fred know?

Ten years ago, possibly eleven, I hosted a dinner for Fred and went to his old butcher for prime rib in fatty USDA prime form. "How do you recommend that I cook this?"

"Bring your steaks to room temperature. Get your pan rocket-hot. Sear your steaks as if branding them. Stand there and yell as if being branded yourself, to assure that you don't overcook them. Allow them to rest covered about 10 minutes."

So I did. And that changed my indoor steak cooking experience permanently. My steak and others were flipped when Fred's and others rare steaks were finished. That is, our steaks were seared twice as long as their scary-rare steaks, but still very short.

While buying those steaks I stopped into the grocery. Outside they had very large box filled with cucumbers and I thought back then, who in the world makes their own pickles? Why?

And now here I am doing it.

I need that type of pickle now so instead of chancing the farmer's markets around here, dealing with the traffic and crowds, and carrying cash, I went back to that shop fully expecting them not to have those same pickles. Most likely that was a one-time seasonal thing.

It's been ten years and both sides of the place are improved dramatically. No cucumbers outside.

And none apparent inside. Although they did have blueberries at 2 clam shell containers for $1.00. So I bought a million of those, since they freeze so nicely. Just this morning I had eaten by the fistfull the last of my frozen blueberries.

Then BOOM there they are. Two full bins of different type pickles, both small; the regular kind and even smaller gherkin kind. I bought half the bin. A grocery bag full.

I already tried the fermentation style pickle, and those were very nice after I repaired the taste with generous sugar.

This time I'll try the refrigerator style. I'm not so concerned about shelf-storage. My aim is bread and butter style pickles.

I f'k'n hate dill pickles. How did that even become a thing? Why does dill get the lockdown on things like pickles and salmon? How did that even happen?

It happened by dill being superabundant in the areas where pickles and salmon cooking developed. They were thinking, what they are going to do with all this crap dill growing all over the place. Great idea, put in pickles with God-awful vinegar, so when you bite into one your eyes squint and your whole face crinkles up to a sourpuss. It'll be a great joke. And just like super-sour joke-candy fascinates children today, it became a thing.

I made gravlax one time with ginger instead of dill and that turned out very nice.

Sweet pickles are better. And I'm going to try to make them. Mine will be ginger-flavored. And sweet to balance the vinegar.

These pickles are dirty.