"DillPickles" news and stories

Photo: you can count on me, Flickr.

National Pickle Day may yet be a couple of months away, but now's the time to start perfecting your technique, as did Flickr user "You Can Count on Me." Though the pickles themselves aren't even pictured, their zingy brine looks promising, with masses of fiery floating peppercorns and sprigs of dill.

Treasured for their tangy flavor alone, pickles boast both a historic background and surprising health benefits. Vitamin-C rich pickles were packed on Christopher Columbus's fateful voyage to help the seamen fight scurvy -- and actually take their name from the ship's stocker, Amerigo Vespucci. Today, the fermented fruits are considered extra nutritious for allowing bacteria the time to create additional vitamins and are in fact more easily digested than their non-treated counterparts. So get pickling!

Check out more pickle trivia at the Science of Pickles and try the pictured recipe from blog Everybody Likes Sandwiches.

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot at having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

I thought I knew my pickles -- steer clear of the sweet (I just can't take the flavor), and revel in the dill, whether that be Polish-style, deli-style, or Vlasic-style. But then I realized how incredibly pickle naive I was.

At a local farmers' market, I perused all the tables, bought my groceries, and then hit the Toorshi Foods pickle table last. I zeroed in on the garlic pickles because, well, nothing's as good as garlic. The flavor exploded in my mouth -- the rich tartness of the pickle balanced by the strong and purr-worthy flavor of garlic. This wasn't some wimpy, barely-there hint of garlic like I expected from past experience.

It was yet another reminder of how wonderful food can taste when you do it yourself, or buy it from someone who does it for you, naturally. Should you eat pickles like a ravenous fiend, it might get pricey. Just as a thin-but-tasty fast food burger can't live up to the real, thick, and juicy thing, a mass-produced pickle can't live up to the flavor of an old Armenian family recipe with no chemical preservatives or additives.