On Pickles

I once was lost, but now am found.

Oh hello, and happy Friday! This is the weekly recipe post for paid subscribers. On Tuesday, all readers will receive our first photo essay because I have had a plot twist moment and changed up the schedule! Next Friday, paid subscribers will receive a recipe for Campari and peach hand pies. There is a hard stop ahead, which sucks, but hey: I need to provide my cats with the life they deserve somehow!

Tastes change as you age. I distinctly remember my great-uncle assuring me that when I grew up, I would like foods like pickles and sauerkraut. I hope it would make him happy to know that he was right—where once I plugged my nose and refused these foods, I now crave them. I seek them out, buying them at the farmers’ markets and shoppy shops alike, amassing a collection of tangy, sour condiments. I am a collector of pickles!

At any given time, the shelves of my refrigerator are stuffed full of Mason jars filled with vegetables in varying states of fermentation. In fact, it’s on my to-do list this weekend to clear out some of the mystery projects that have been pushed to the back one too many times and as a result, have acquired perhaps a little too much color.

Zucchini pickles in all of their macro shot glory!

There is one jar of pickles, though, that is never subjected to the humiliation of the compost bin. The zucchini pickles that my mom makes every year disappear so fast that I almost start to hyperventilate the moment I pop the lid off of the jar for the first time. They’re so perfect that they really don’t even need anything to carry them—they’re a treat in their own right, and so perfectly prickly and sweet that she and I ate them standing up, passing the jar back and forth and eating them with forks the last time I was home.

When she sent me the recipe, I was pleased to see that my great-grandfather, who we called Bill-Bill, had called them zucchini relish pickles. Relish-like is a great way to describe this pickling method, which uses sugar and spices alike to turn the humble zucchini squash into something magnificent. I’m planning to eat what’s left of the jar my mom gave me last week with rice tonight for a simple, cool summer dinner, and then spend the bulk of the afternoon tomorrow turning my giant zucchini into giant zucchini pickles so I can do the same thing next weekend. Summer! What a season.