I realized recently that I was buying two jars of pickles a week. Every week. Even when on the road, I am buying pickles. I have three brands I like, all are HFCS free and have thick cut chips, I don’t have time for thin little slices. Vlasic Farmer, which has carrot and sweet peppers in the brine for an extra treat, Bubbie’s and Brooklyn Brine. Bread and butter is the flavor I love most, but every once in a while I will get a hankering for a dill pickle. But bread and butter is my thing! The irony is that I grew up eating them on sourdough bread with LOTS of butter and even cheese and so in my mind, when I now eat the plain pickle, I can still ‘taste’ those other things in my mouth. The mind is amazingly powerful!
Pickles are such a wonderful substitute for bread! I make various salads such as tuna, crab, shrimp and chicken, and put a bit on each pickle. I will take some phenomenal Kite Hill almond cheese and put it on them instead of crackers. The brine is good for far more than just the initial pickles, so when I finish the contents, I will put in snow peas or cauliflower florets, more carrots and basically any ‘hard’ vegetable. I did try brining an avocado once. Let’s just say that I do not recommend that.
I think that the sweet, salty, briny, crunchy and cold all work together to really get a party going on in your mouth and that is highly satisfying. So even when I am eating 6 pickles, plain, as a mid-morning snack I am getting great satisfaction for just 30 calories. Cannot beat that!
What is your favorite treat that is unusual, perhaps consumed in quantities that are greater than the standard person would desire, or acts as a wonderful substitution for something else? I’d love to hear about it!
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