pickles

i hope everybody had as much fun with the "pangs" as i did writing about it. we're all pretty ridiculous with our peccadilloes, preferences and predilections, and i only mean to have fun by them. even by my own.

so does anybody else have this same emotional attachment to dill pickles as the default and quintessential pickle as i have this emotional attachment to dill pickles as the default and quintessential pickle? i think i've written about vanilla ice cream before, but if i'm being honest i have to tell you: dill pickles are to pickles far beyond what vanilla ever dreamed to be regarding ice cream. (and you know how i feel about vanilla ice cream).

the fact that there are other styles and flavors of things that get called pickles out there notwithstanding, calling something a dill pickle is, to me, just plain redundant. it is what pickles are. we should probably digress to also observe that cucumbers are to pickles like pork is to proscuitto, and, no, calling something "turkey ham" does not make it "ham", tyvm, but i'm hoping that at least that much can go without further saying.

so when i wended my way through the lunch line a few moments ago to regard what was waiting for me in the sliced pickle pot at the end of the deli station, i almost dropped my tray. crinkle cut. little pale peppercorns dotted about. a sickly, slightly luminescent green tinge to the brine. there could be no doubt. and no, by any other recipe, no other pickle, no matter how ambitiously named or flavored, tastes as sweet. give me dill or give me... i KNOW patrick henry would have known exactly what to say.

they don't belong on sandwiches. they barely belong inside the supermarket at all, except for the little old ladies who like to have them with the little gherkins and cauliflowers mixed in as a cocktail accent. they simply aren't pickles. and they have no business anywhere near somewhere someone might be tempted to post a sign, no matter how misguided for their mistaken pickle savvy, that includes the word "deli".

clausen, despite having to mass produce and distribute theirs, knows how to call it. "sandwich slices". because that's what you do with sliced dill pickles--you put them on sandwiches. (burgers being just a specialized form of sandwich, after all). any self-respecting deli, regardless of whether they've got the sense and taste to put a huge glass vat of 'em whole on top of the counter, knows that when they offer "you want pickles on that?" that their audience expects and will settle for nothing less than a dill. (sliced or diced, i've seen 'em and enjoyed 'em both ways). i'm even willing to stretch the definition to let 'em consider adding garlic to their recipe, if they'd like to add just that little extra bit of bite, but it's the dill that defines it.

so today i realize that, though some people get pangs to think about sharing the person with whom they'd like to share freud's version of a pickle, i just get pangs thinking about pickles.

dill.