i attended a russian pickle making workshop last evening. it’s very easy to make pickles when someone else does all the prep work for you! i learned some stuff about pickling (like leaving the cucumbers in cold water for 3-4 hours before pickling them) and enjoyed the class. there was an older, white-haired woman there with too-short khaki pants, white socks, black tennies and a t-shirt with daisies that said “whatever” on it that cracked me up a little. i think the class was about “russian” pickles because the guy who was teaching it was from russia. the pickles tasted pretty much like pickles to me. garlicky and yummy.<\/p>\n
at the beginning, some guy was writing out the class information on a big notepad and using one of those “king” permanent markers. the smell totally took me back to grade school. i loved to help the teacher grade papers and play teacher when i was a kid because i liked the smell of the marker. i didn’t “sniff” them per se, but i liked the way they smelled. i also remember that my deepest, darkest secret when i was younger was that i liked the way fresh cigarette smoke smelled. i felt it was deeply shameful that i would like the smell, but i felt guilty about keeping secrets from my mom, so i eventually confessed to her that i liked the smell of cigarettes. i think it was kind of an “out-of-the-blue” statement and i remember that her response was pretty non-committal, so i ended up sort of getting over feeling guilty and also sort of got over liking the smell because it was no longer taboo for me to like it. i still like it better than the smell of stale cigarette smoke. i guess i liked second-hand highs. :)<\/p>\n
i’ll let you know how the pickles turned out in 3 to 7 days when i let them stop fermenting and put them in the fridge.<\/p>\n
i also made more peach jam and some bread last night because it wasn’t deathly hot in the house. yum!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
i attended a russian pickle making workshop last evening. it’s very easy to make pickles when someone else does all the prep work for you! i learned some stuff about pickling (like leaving the cucumbers in cold water for 3-4 … Continue reading