making pickles

Sometimes former employees come by the deli to visit. It's always nice to see what's going on with our "alums." Degrees, marriages, children, careers - changes... You know what else is cool?  That they do come by to visit. That means they must have pleasant memories of their times at the deli. One of our recent former employee visitor people was Julio.  Julio washed dishes at the deli for over a year, sometime around 2005 or 2006. I wish I had a picture to post here of Julio, because I think he's a pretty outstanding character, the kind that I imagine to be surprisingly photogenic. He's a cute and quirky little guy whose English is "broken" at best. He has a wife and three or four kids.  Sweet guy.  And he comes by to visit once in a while.

On his most recent visit we learned that Julio is working for a produce company these days. He was, in fact, selling produce when he stopped by.  Julio offered up some beautiful heirloom tomatoes by the case, as well as a big bag of great red bell peppers . His prices were really good, too. We communicated with smiles and gestures and words - some English, some Spanish - and arrived at an agreement.

A few days later Julio came by again with more produce.  This time he had some wonderful steakhouse tomatoes and a case of small pickling cucumbers. We told him we could use the tomatoes but not the cucumbers. At W. D. Deli, we don't use cucumbers in anything we make so we would not be needing any cucumbers. Somewhere and somehow in our miscommunication, we ended up with a case of cucumbers.

We all know what to do when life gives you lemons. But what about when life gives you cucumbers? Here's what you do: You make pickles.

Mr. Bobo went online and found a recipe for something called Refrigerator Pickles. It's a relatively easy thing to do, this Refrigerator Pickles thing. I won't print the recipe here. It's easy enough to find the recipe. But I'll share my little pictures of my happy pickle making time. Now I'm looking forward to Julio's next visit.  Maybe he'll bring lemons.  I'll know what to do with those. (Get some glasses, some ice....)