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Pickle everything

  • Writer: kaydee777
    kaydee777
  • 5 days ago
  • 4 min read
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Once upon a time, oh… about 49 years ago…I met a young person who was crazy about pickles. In fact I believe pickled onions, asparagus and olives, appropriated from their mother’s plate, were this young person’s first solid foods. Mother’s milk and pickles: food of the gods! and the less said the better about teething on the stems of delicious monsters on the porch. Honestly some mothers! The things they let their children do.

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While I often have that particular person in my mind, it has been especially so this week as I production line pickles.

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Yes, of course there are cucumbers and dilly beans. Living in the enchanted Chile Capital of the World (that’s what the vehicle registration plates say) some (most) of these pickles are liberally laced with chile. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of my kitchen.

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Garlic and garden herbs like thyme, rosemary and marjoram/oregano (I can’t tell the difference and didn’t label the bushes way back when) also feature in just about every jar. Because that’s what my Garden of Earthly Delights is good at.

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Most of this week’s kitchen alchemy raw materials were foraged over the mountains and through the woods at Silver City Farmers Market last Saturday. It was promising to be way too hot in my home town so I played hooky from my usual Saturday market.

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Also, Silver City Farmers Market has a couple of genuine permaculture farms like Jason and Olivia Servis’ Hazy Foothills Permaculture, who grew the tomatoes for the saucy sauce above, the lovely full moon coloured string beans for the dilly beans, and bunches of beets, not featured in photos for this post but pickling away in my pantry. These and more vendors currently offer piles of fresh picked, beautifully displayed vegetables of wonder and delight, absolutely heavenly goat cheese and all that kind of delicious stuff.

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Altogether, records show that I spent $98 on fresh vegetables at these industrious farmers’ booths last Saturday. It was two thirds of my 2025 senior farmers market allowance from the State of New Mexico, which, under the current governor, is particularly generous to low income seniors and small family farms who vend at Farmers Markets. Oversimplifying perhaps, but in essence, in New Mexico, some of the oil and gas earth exploitation profits (taxes) get passed on in the form of grants to farmers and in other socially supportive and positive ways (like grants for public health initiatives like rural hospitals and community health clinics, public libraries and early childhood education). As long as our elected officials support this use of the funds. Does it make fracking less bad or justify driving overpowered gas guzzlers? No, but…who you vote into office matters.


Since I cannot go over the mountain (and through the woods) to this particular farmers market frequently, I tried to spend the money wisely on vegetables which I could pickle or ferment to extend their shelf life. I plan to go back once more before the end of November, when this particular grant ends, to invest in winter pumpkins and whatever else is on offer at that time.

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Four pounds of carrots from Gone Fishin’ farm, (who incidentally take woofers), after being laced with salt, grated ginger root and caraway seed are now are happily bubbling in a corner, stinking up the kitchen as they transform into carrot kraut. It’s like sauerkraut but with carrots since cabbages are scarce right now. One could perhaps call it carrot kimchi too, but no Korean cooks were directly consulted for the imagining of this lactose ferment. Theoretically it can last a year or two. In reality I might have finished it off way before that. Lacto fermenting is one of my favorite ways to extend the harvest and means I always have tasty, gut biome friendly food to eat. Plus, like that young person I once knew, I just love pickles (and kimchi and krauts)

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The last bag of sweet onions I imported into the kitchen ended up looking like this before I noticed what they were doing up there in the hanging colander, so two or three pounds of Dominguez Canyon Ranch sweet onions have been sliced and doused in apple cider vinegar. This farm also grew the red onions featured above.

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It is still pickled onions if it’s sliced isn’t it?


Since that pickle loving young person from way back when grew up to be (amongst other things) a swashbuckling adventurer, garden and landscape whisperer and ship’s captain, today’s recommended reading is:


The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the fateful final voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides. (2024). Spoiler alert, the finale of this fascinating, engaging and well researched biography of Captain James Cook and the swashbuckling days of map making and sailing ships, is a bit grim for a certain sea captain.


The author is not Polynesian nor, I don’t think, a directly linked member of any First People/Indigenous Peoples nation, yet an attempt is made to take a neutral (dare I say an infuriatingly scholarly) tone to tell of various first contact events and especially the endgame for Captain Cook. Hawaiians might have slightly different versions of the story. I only wish I had read this book before I had the wonderful opportunity to paddle Kealakekua Bay several times, and be immersed in the sacred sites and surrounding historical district . Oh yes the book wasn’t written yet….I grow old.


And so does the young pickle lovin’ person. Happy Birthday! Pantry is loaded. Wish you were here.

 
 
 

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