You might as well get used to it – you’re going to hear me say over and over and over again “when I was a little girl” or “my mom used to” or “I remember” – but I hope that you will understand that this is only because so much of what I grew up observing or doing in the kitchen has gone by the wayside or, when it is done today, it is done with little understanding of the past.

Here is a for instance.  Last week a friend called complaining about a jar of “bread and butter” pickles that she had purchased at the Brooklyn Flea – which seems to be as much about food as about “flea market finds.”  Expecting to taste the sweet, slightly spicy, crunchy pickle slices of her mid-western youth, she was shocked to open the jar and find a dilly, herby, sour chunk.  We talked at length about this and came to the conclusion that many young cooks “recreate” recipes for which they have no taste memory.  And, from my point of view, taste memory is absolutely essential to good cooking – almost more so than technique.  I don’t believe that you can go on the web or turn the pages of a book and expect to create the perfect dish, particularly if it is one that has some history.  And, even if you want to create your own recipe, you still need the sensory impulse to make the flavors meld.

All that to say that I brought her a jar of my much-loved “pickles to add oomph to a sandwich.”   I had just made the first batch of this season – 10 half-pints and I am already down to 5.  They aren’t quite bread and butter pickles that are a sweet-zesty combination of Kirby cukes, green bell pepper, and sweet onion, but they run a close second to the old-fashioned homemade ones.  When I was “putting the pickles by” – the term my mom used to use for all of her canning and preserving – I was thinking about just how much food a woman had to “put by” to feed her family a century ago.  My summer’s output dims, but then I think that a little bit is better than none which leads me back to the farm stand and another bushel of something to “put by.”