Tsunami sushi

Sometimes I like to go around pretending I'm politically liberal beholden to liberal tropes. And other times just act like a dope. At the fish counter, I must say glorious fish counter, it's the most thoughtful such thing that you'll find, they have arranged a row of aluminum livestock water barrels in font of their outstanding display case, oval basins such as you see under windmill pumps. Except these are loaded with huge red snapper fish covered in ice; a veritable fortune in fresh fish. The sign reads "Please do not touch the fish."

"Your sign says, "Do not touch the fish." The tall young male hipster looks down from on high behind the display case. Without vocalization he communicates clearly, "Well, yeah." 

No smiling. "So how am I going to play with the fish if I cannot touch it? There goes all the fun."

He knows he's being put on. He laughs easily. "You can play whatever you want with whatever you buy." 

That sounds reasonable. Everybody is so reasonable. So ready to play along. And always tremendously helpful. 

I wanted to pull my shocked liberal schtick for being insensitive to tragedy fallen on others far away, but the attempt failed. When I looked up to speak I realized everyone back there making these things is Japanese. 

I only went in there to get peaches, but too bad for me, peach season has ended. 

The peach season curtain has fallen like 

SLAM! 

It's apple season now.

I couldn't believe how busy the place is on Sunday. Parking lot full. All the little carts taken. And you won't believe me when I tell you how easy it is to strike up conversation on days like today. Everybody I encountered without exception, a lot of people today, were all ready to stop what they're doing and converse. About anything.

But my real destination is the tiny Greek grocery, something of a speciality shop. I must get my phone and show you a picture. Hang on. 

Darn. That picture didn't take. And a car came up behind me so I had to move on. This was pulled from Yelp and fixed in Photoshop.

The whole point was to buy some more cucumbers. I took a bag with me to fill it up. 

"Say, how much does that bag of cucumbers weigh?"

"11 LBS. 6 OZ." 

"Far out." 

It's Greek. They have a lot of Greek things, Greek feta, lamb gyros, baklava, olives, olive oil, dates and figs and the rest, what the heck, buy all of it. 

It's all about pickles. 

I bought a gigantic steel pot and latex gloves, and lime to get busy. Supposedly an overnight soaking in lime imparts added crunch. I must now get busy with cucumbers.

Last week I made six 1-qt jars of sweet-ginger pickles. 

Here's my recipe. 

twice as much sugar as white vinegar, plus half a jar of allspice berries. Two incredibly large hands of ginger sliced paper thin on the mandolin.

Soak cucumbers and cut into quarters lengthwise. Soak in lime solution 1 cup lime to 1 gallon of water. I think. Rinse three times. 

Bring the sweet/sour mixture to boil with with ginger and allspice berries. Add quartered cucumbers. Keep them in there until they turn opaque, just a few minutes then remove them so they stop cooking. Put the cucumbers in jars. Add the syrup to top off the jars. Drink the remaining syrup and get high from all the insane sugar. Put caps on the jars and refrigerate. 

Give away a couple of jars and eat the rest like an insatiable pig. I ate four quarts of, that's like what, a full gallon of sweet-ginger pickles in one week and I still couldn't get enough of them. They are simply the best pickles that I've ever tasted. But I like things that are sweet. And I really really like ginger. 

A friend who received a jar wrote back saying simply "Wow." But I don't know what that means. It could mean that he doesn't care for them and intends to give them away. I don't know without him saying more than that. And I haven't heard back from the woman. All that I know for sure is that I like them better than any other pickle that I've had. 

And from my p.o.v. that's all that matters.