My parents make the best pickles.

The. Best.

Doubters are immediately silenced and pickle naysayers become converts after trying them. They are juicy crunchy pickle perfection. I am ruined for all other pickles and can’t be bothered with store bought sorry substitutes.

My parents have been making pickles for as long as I remember. Late summer meant a trip to the St. Lawrence market for bushels of cucumbers, scrubbing and soaking them overnight, followed by a day of chopping dill, peeling garlic and boiling big pots of brine. The production was accompanied by copious bouts of perspiring and swearing around our old Formica kitchen table but the effort was well worth it. It was magical to see the counter covered with neat rows of gleaming mason jars, alchemy transforming the lowly cucumber into crunchy gold.

My dad is starting to get tired of the process and every year swears that “this is the last (bleeping)  year! I’m too (bleeping) old for this (bleeping bleep). It would be cheaper and easier to just buy a jar of (bleeping) pickles.”

Tradition, however, adds a flavour that cannot be store-bought, and as a result The Sweetie and I have attempted to take over the pickling reins. My parents act as supervisors and spiritual pickle guides but inevitably end up doing the bulk of the work because they are control freaks. We try to be pickling assistants to the best of our ability and hope that my parents’ wisdom and experience will seep into our pores along with the vinegary brine.

Most importantly of course, I now have many pickles to put in my pickle loot bags. No guest in our home will walk away empty handed thanks to my parents secret recipe and hard work.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 11:37 am and is filed under Cooking & Baking . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.