You know what I think is a really good idea?  Home pickling.  Until recently I  had never given it much thought.  But I ran across a little article about pickling in my AARP Magazine.  I think it was last month’s issue, but I can’t say that for sure.  Sometimes our mail and magazines tend to pile up on our dinning room table.  I try and make it a point to move the newer stuff towards the bottom of the stack, so I have a shot at reading things in chronological order.  I used to be  pretty good at this sort of thing.  “Stock rotation” is what we called it back in the day I was actually working in a pharmacy.  It has always been an important part  of pharmacy protocol.  As you might suspect, management tends to frown on a $1,200.00 expired drug loss incurred because someone simply forgot to place a new bottle of medication in back of the old.  In general It’s a good idea to pay attention to all aspects of pharmacy stock control.

Example of Poor Pharmacy Stock Control

Anyway, now I am thinking I might start doing some pickling, because I really like pickles.  I have a bad habit of snacking late at night, and am constantly in search of something tasty that won’t contribute to my slowly expanding waistline that is mostly the result of my slowly expanding role as resident sofa spud.  The neat thing about pickles is they are like a crunchy solid wrapped around a refreshing liquid.  And the real clincher is your basic dill spear provides you with zero calories.  Nutritionally I am not sure what other benefits they provide, but I could give a shit.  It’s my late night snack, not my post work-out replenishment.  And they’re so versatile.  You can layer on a narrow slice of American cheese, and top it off with some cream cheese and then wrap a piece of bacon around the whole thing.  That’s the best way I’ve found to keep things from shifting around.  Then you don’t have to mess around using a toothpick to hold all the stuff in place.  I never know what to do with those damn tooth picks.  Sometimes when I’m at a party at someone else house I just drop them on the floor when no one is looking.  So remember.  With zero calories, a pickle just might be the thing for you next time you’re in a low-cal snacking mood.  I have a feeling I’m on to something here.  I’m pretty pumped.  I guess you can pickle almost anything.  At least that’s what my neighbor says.  He’s been doing it for quite awhile.  He even gave me some snapshots of some stuff he’s done.  I thought I’d share them with you here.  I’m not sure if I will ever be as good at pickling as my neighbor is though.

Above-PORTENT OF PICKLING POSSIBILITIES

I hate plunging blindly into anything new.  I have those pickling instructions in my AARP article, but come on.  Who knows how old and senile the author is.  Whoever it is probably forgot a step or two.   I usually try and consult with an expert if I can before moving forward in these situations.   For my pickling experience, I know I have the perfect advisor.  It’s my sister-in-law Kim.  She keeps bragging on how much she pickles, so I intend to find out if she’s full of shit, like her husband is.  But Kim strikes me as a helpful, sincere person.  Take the Dave Matthews concert we were at in DesMoines a few weeks ago.  At intermission she was sitting in a women’s rest room stall minding her own business when a guy started urinating on her foot.  I don’t know how the guy even got into the women’s rest room, but there he was, in the stall next to Kim, urinating on her foot.  I suppose he worked himself into a bladder clenching frenzy and didn’t think he could wait for his conventionalI  turn at a mens urinal, so he barged in with his girl friend in desperation.   In his defense, rest room lines during intermission at a Dave Matthews concert can be a real shit-storm.  But apparently the situation was so desperate the guy couldn’t wait for his girl friend to get off the toilet, so he thought the drainage grate he spotted on the floor would do in a pinch.  Naturally the stream of  urine ricocheted off of the floor grate, under the stall partition,  and onto Kim’s foot.  No one would make that kind of shit up, right?  At first Kim was incensed.  The guy bolted out of the stall, and Kim did likewise, with the intension of giving the culprit a bitch slapping piece of her mind.  She even had her cell phone ready and took a quick picture of the guy so she could show it to authorities.   I downloaded it here so you could see what the guy looks like in case you ever run into him at a concert you are attending.  But it only took a quick glance at the perpetrator for her to reanalyze her strategy.  She seemed to think she could live with a little urine on her foot, but not so sure she would survive a couple of the things this particular concert attendee said he had in mind for her.  In the end Kim came to the conclusion he was just your average guy out there having a little fun. That’s what I like about Kim.   She’s just one of those people that can’t help being nice.  It’s that kind of thoughtfulness and quick thinking that makes me feel pretty confident she can help me with my pickles.

So my wife bought me some mason jars and next time we make a trip to Kim’s I’m taking them along and will have her show me what to do.  By then I’m pretty sure she would have showered up enough I won’t have any big health concerns.