My Grandma’s Pickles
I swear to God if anyone makes a "Pickle Rick" joke I will vote for Joe Biden.
My Grandma makes the best pickles. And when I say the best, I don’t mean it in the sense that I have to like them because my Grandma makes them. I mean it in the sense that I have eaten a lot of pickles, and these top the rankings no matter the challenger. I mean it in the 97 Bulls sense. Bar none the best pickle. In one day I’ve eaten them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And snacks. Whenever I visit, which I am quite aware is not enough, I ask my grandmother for a jar. In fact, one of the saddest moments in my life occurred when I got out of the car after the five-hour trip, turned around, felt, heard, and then saw my precious Mason jar of pickles fall and shatter on the concrete outside of my apartment. I cried a little, and seriously considered going back. I wouldn’t have minded the drive. Not a traditional dill pickle, these resemble a bread and butter pickle or a sweet pickle. My Grandma – the sweet family name for her is “Grandma” – calls them “3, 2, 1, Pickles.” I think that means 3 portions water, 2 portions vinegar, and 1 portion sugar, but I don’t know. The recipe reportedly comes from a Mennonite cookbook, but other people have tried that recipe and did not achieve similar results. My grandma grows many of her own cucumbers, or as she sometimes refers to them “pickles,” and I think that her secret resides there. She doesn’t grow the big hothouse cucumbers that so many of us have come to hate. Instead she grows a skinner English cuke. This cuke has more flavor than the stale water taste of a typical grocery store cucumber, imparting another level to her pickles, hard to match for you typical home chef.
Pickles certainly do not tickle everyone’s taste buds. For those among us who do not understand the delicious snap of a pickle, or the mouth-watering scent of vinegar, my Grandma makes sweet rolls. And they’re almost as good. She makes her own potato water which adds a softness and pliability to the rolls. But the rolls remain a side show. I’ve never eaten rolls for three meals in a day. I’ve never painstakingly packed the rolls into a bag and savored them at home over a period of weeks – who am I kidding? Days.
The rolls, despite being delicious beyond belief, do match up to the pickles.
So what’s the point of reading a review of a pickle you’ll never eat? While she would certainly be very welcoming, just showing up at my grandparent’s place might throw off their schedules. She’d probably also run out of pickles if everyone started showing up at their home. Also, traditionally, everyone’s grandma makes the best food. It’s almost entirely the point of grandmas! To make good food. So why should you care about my specific grandma’s special dish? I’m just some guy. Biographers will not pore over my life, looking for little tidbits to make their airport biography of me stand out. I don’t have legions of fans all trying to mimic my lifestyle. My grandma’s pickles don’t need some imagined imprimatur of coolness bestowed upon them through my cosign. So why write this?
A couple of reasons. The big one though, the one that I’ll explicate, is that it moves us away from a strictly consumptive relationship to the world. More and more, cultural cachet relies on the idea that you’ve had, done, or seen the next big thing. That new Netflix show everyone talks about? Why haven’t you watched it yet? It’s so good! That new restaurant downtown? You HAVE to try their hummus/ramen/cocktails/tacos. They changed my life. Lollapalooza? You have to go! Best weekend of my life. Making sure you’ve eaten, been to, or watched the next big thing has become a driving force of American life. Has this always been the case? Not sure. Lots of people participated in fads around the turn of the 19th-20th Century in the U.S. So Americans have done this before. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that sometimes it’s good to not partake in the newest and best thing.
And that brings us back to the pickles. My grandma’s pickles will not ever become the next big thing. I don’t have the internet presence or cultural capital to make them so. I wouldn’t wish that upon these pickles. However, I do want people to know about them. And I want to know about your favorite things that I’ll never experience. Because sometimes, contrary to everything Americans have ever learned not seeing it with my own eyes, tasting it with my own mouth, hearing it with my own ears does make it better. Building up a picture of something in your head, knowing you’ll never experience it allows it to shine. It doesn’t need to meet expectations, or live up to reality, or match its billing. Knowing that thing exist that your friends love, and you will never know, rules. That separation, that gap, is healthy. If everyone did the same things or saw the same stuff, the world would bore everyone. I’ve never seen Titanic and I probably never will. Not out of some sort of contrarian act of James Cameron hating, but because I’ve built up this wonderful idea of Titanic in my head, and I don’t want to ruin that.
So imagine my grandmother’s pickles. Unless your grandmother makes pickles, no one has ever had better pickles then these. You’ll probably never eat them, but knowing that someone has, knowing that perfect pickle exists and brings someone joy, hopefully that feels as good for you as it does for me. Perfection shouldn’t be ruined by experience. Consumption shouldn’t control our lives and imaginations. Let the pickles be.