Texas Tito’s Summer Sausage is featured at this years Sweets & Snacks Expo new product showcase.  Tito’s is exhibiting in booth # 72 starting tomorrow.

By: Team Express FoodIE   –   The Indian Express

Vedapuri Subramaniam and his wife Meenakshi work 18-hour days to make pickles, spice mixes and more at their home, which are delivered to all parts of India via their year-old website. They’re only in their 70s.

Vedapuri Subramaniam is a lean, wiry, young entrepreneur of 76. His wife Meenakshi, after whom their website Meenakshimami.com has been named, turns 70 this year. Their day usually begins before sunrise at about 5am and winds up at about 10.30pm. “Yes, I do get tired,” says Subramaniam, with a touch of defiance, “but I don’t care. I don’t call this my home. This is my factory.” A large part of his Navi Mumbai residence has been turned into a processing unit of sorts. Rows of large, cylindrical plastic cans, filled with pickles, have been lined up.

“We made avakaya pickle just last week,” says Meenakshi. The Andhra avakaya pickle has to be stirred every day for at least six weeks. The stirring bit is Subramaniam’s responsibility, while his wife checks for taste. “It’s almost like how guests at a wedding tell the host that the sambar needs a dash of salt, or the rasam is too tangy so some water can be added to adjust its taste,” says Meenakshi.

Every pickle needs some minor adjustments – salt needs to be added or more oil goes in – and the couple makes almost 400kg of 11 varieties of pickles every year, including avakaya, gongura, kadu maanga, ginger, mahani (sarsaparilla), green chilli and lemon. “My mother-in-law’s the official taster and my father-in-law does the rest from sourcing the ingredients to supervising the vegetables being cut to preserving them,” says Sonali, their daughter-in-law, who, along with her husband Shriram, helps out with the website and delivery of the products.

Subramaniam left his home town Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu in the mid-1950s to work in the food manufacturing industry in Mumbai, and supplied ingredients to various companies that made pickles and ready-to-eat foods for close to four decades. “If you see how some of the biggest companies make pickles, you wouldn’t want to eat them,” he says. “This is why I ensure that cleanliness is the most important aspect of my pickle-making.” Meenakshimami.com is not the couple’s first entrepreneurial venture. They burnt their fingers with an earlier operation that manufactured ready-to-eat food. “The competition ate me up. This is why I want to build this slowly. We need some more time to set up hassle-free delivery to other parts of the country.”

Subramaniam travels as far as Tiruchirapalli every year to source the mahani root for the sarsaparilla pickle. “Adivasis from the forests in Trichy pick these roots, and this is the most difficult pickle to make because cleaning it is tedious. But it is also one of our most popular pickles besides the ginger pickle.” Egged on by their son and daughter-in-law, he took his business online last year. “It’s mostly Maharashtrians, Tamilians and Gujaratis from Mumbai who order our pickles.” Unlike most Andhra pickles available in Hyderabad, none of these pickles contain garlic and more reasonably priced than those on supermarket shelves.

What is the couple’s favourite pickle? “Avakaya,” says Meenakshi, without blinking.

“Pickle is a must in our home, but I can’t eat too much of it at this age,” she adds. Her husband, on the other hand, doesn’t quite like p ickles. “I like these powders,” says Subramaniam, pointing to the vatha kuzhambu spice mix. “I have beaten my wife at making this. She spends hours making this at home, but with my recipe you just need to boil water, and it’s done in 10 minutes. My recipe is also one step ahead in taste.” The couple, who were been married for 47 years laughs together. When Meenakshi is out of ear shot, he says with a beaming smile, “She makes good pickles. Very good pickles. I would say the best.”

Tangy, tart, and fabulously fermentable times are just ahead downtown.

By Alysia Gray Painter   –   NBC Los Angeles

The pickle is pretty darn quirky, and we’re not just talking about its fun-to-say, oh-so-charming name.

It’s a specific foodstuff — everyone knows what you mean when you say “I want a pickle” — and yet oodles of other edibles can be pickled. Which makes the pickle much like salt, and a roast, and toast, in that what they are, and what they can do to other foods, are two deliciously distinct things.

his is solid information to possess before your mosey over to the Pickle Party atGrand Central Market. The downtown landmark is hosting the tart-to-the-taste-buds bash on Sunday, May 15, but know that you won’t just be noshing upon the green-hued classic, the one sitting in a jar inside your fridge door at this very moment.

There shall be pickling knowledge, helpful tips shared by “fermentation guru” Sandor Ellix Katz. And Mr. Katz will oversee the rather amazing main draw of the event, the “1,000 Pounds of Kraut” project.

What is this? It’s “a crowd-sourced communal sauerkraut-making session” involving a “day-long ‘Kraut Mob'” that’ll be behind the ongoing creation of, you guessed it, one thousand pounds of flavorful kraut goodness.

If you take a break from all the kraut-makery, be sure to check out the chefly demos dotting Grand Central Market, like those involving “Asian and Latino pickles and condiments.”

There’s also a pop-up Pickle Marketplace to peruse, too, and various vendors will sell “special pickle menu items” in honor of the happening.

Are you already sensing that your summertime barbecues, regardless of the main meat or veg, are about to step it up in terms of divine pickled delectables?

We wouldn’t dare suggest that pickle people ever forsake the green bumpily spear, the one we love on the side of our sandwich plate, for other, er, less greener horizons.

But the pickling planet is large, and it is welcoming of all sorts of cuisine-cool comers.

Really, what can’t be pickled (or salted or roasted or toasted)?

It’s an old kitchen calling with major implications for our contemporary entertaining. May pickled bites continue to lend tang wherever tang is needed.

A funky and fermented pop-up is giving pickle lovers the chance to sample some of the best pickles in town, learn about fermenting techniques and lend a hand in making 1,000 pounds of sauerkraut.

On Sunday, May 15, Grand Central Market, Los Angeles will host its first ever Pickle Party, a day-long event dedicated to all good things that are pickled, brined and fermented. The event will feature a pickle marketplace from local purveyors, chef demos and pickling demos. The centerpiece of the day will be the massive, communal kraut-making session led by fermentation expert and best-selling author Sandor Ellix Katz.

Throughout the day, visitors are invited to join Katz in an all-day “Kraut Mob” with the goal of creating 1,000 pounds of the good stuff. Participants will get to take home a free jar of sauerkraut along with instructions on how to complete the fermentation process at home. Katz, author of The Art of Fermentation, James Beard Foundation Book Award in 2013, will also be giving a free public lecture on fermentation and the multiple benefits of live-culture foods. He will also be joined by Pascal Baudar, a professional forager that leads tours around L.A. and author of The New Wildcrafted Cuisine: Exploring the Exotic Gastronomy of Local Terroir, for a wild-foraged pickle demonstration. Both will be signing copies of their books afterward.

The marketplace will feature fermented goodies from the local favorites, including Pickled By Hattie, Wax Paper, Brassica & Brine, Dave’s Kimchi and Perishable Pickles. While the chef demos will introduce guests to both traditional and “next-level” pickling techniques, as well as covering topics like Asian and Latino pickles and condiments, “leaf-to-root” pickling to reduce food waste, and more.

The Pickle Party will take place at Grand Central Market on Sunday, May 15, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

RICHMOND, Va – Science shows that eating pickled and fermented foods can have health benefits. You can preserve  the season’s fresh vegetables when you ferment them and you’ll find everything from vegetables to fruit at the “1st Annual Pickled and Fermented Festival.”

Ashley Ray and Larkin Garbee from the Artisan Pickle Club filled us in on the event taking place on Saturday, May 14 at 1 p.m. at Center of The Universe Brewing Companyin Ashland.

“We’re still looking for pickled or fermented vendors (pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut, sourdough bread, etc) and entries for our pickle competition,” Ray said.