I asked my house sitter for a shopping list so as to leave her a properly stocked pantry. On the list was a “big jar of pickles.” I lamented not having better pickles to offer her than these soggy and leathery navy-green cucumber prunes, but when I returned home it all made sense. She had tossed the pickles themselves and replaced them with the contents of a $5 bag of pickling cukes from the farmers market, from the guy who gives you free sprigs of dill with all your cucumber purchases. She had stuck one of those fresh seedbeds in the pickle jar as well, along with a clove of garlic from the garden.
These new pickles in old brine were bright green and as crispy as freshly opened potato chips, and in the juicy crunch of each bite you could still taste raw cucumber, along with the herbal salty vinegar of the pickle brine. That was weeks ago, and that jar is still going, like an infinite pickle glitch.
