Did you know that you can pickle just about any vegetable you can grow?  Pickling is a great way to preserve food that would otherwise spoil! It enables us to enjoy vegetables year round, even when they are not in season. We’ll learn how the process works and use herbs, spices, and vinegar to make a pickle mix that adds a whole new flavor to a variety of veggies. Girls should bring an 8 oz jar to take home the veggies they pickle. SoFAB will have a limited number of jars for sale on the day of if you forget!

There will be three hour-long sessions, with a maximum of 25 girl scouts per hour. Please purchase your tickets for the correct hour.

Tickets

Please be sure to purchase your advance tickets by Friday, November 13 to ensure we have enough supplies for your group.

Special Girl Scout discount rate of $8 per participant which includes the activity and entrance to the museum. SoFAB allows up to 3 free chaperons for each troop, additional adults will be charged $5 for museum entrance. Troops must reserve participation slots in advance by calling 504-569-0405 or purchasing a ticket below. Participation slots are available on a first come, first serve basis. Tickets are also available for the February 20, 2016 Girl Scout Class: The Art of Pasta Making. Please be sure to choose the correct date!

For more information, please contact Jennie Merrill at camp@southernfood.org or 504-569-0405.

Please choose the date and time you would like to attend below. If you have any issues with the ticketing software or would prefer to make your reservation on the phone, please call us at 504-267-7490 during the week or 504-569-0405 on weekends. Tickets may be refunded or exchanged up to 48 hours prior to the event. After 48 hours no refunds will be available.

• Saturday, November 14, 2015
• 11:00am 2:00pm

• Southern Food and Beverage Museum1504 Oretha Castle Haley BoulevardNew Orleans, LA, 70113United States

About SoFAB

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum and The Museum of the American Cocktail host a variety of programs in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and beyond. See the below schedule for upcoming cooking programs, lectures, and tastings. Interested in booking your next private event at the amazing Southern Food and Beverage Museum? Learn more here!

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum is partnering with Girl Scouts of America to host occasional cooking classes. Only Girl Scouts are eligible to join these classes at this time.

By Carmen Machado | NPR

The Pickle Index app — one way to experience Eli Horowitz’s newest novel and multimedia project — opens with what looks like an ad for an Apple product. Millennials gather to feast together in a stylishly decorated home, laughing and communing silently behind a veneer of electric pop. They lay down newspaper; they tuck napkins into their shirt collars. But instead of plates of steamed seafood or roasted vegetables, a tray is overturned before them, and there are … pickles. Huge, meaty dill pickles. The hip young friends joyfully pick up the pickles. (Sorry.) They gnaw on them with relish. (Sorry, again.) They laugh and laugh and smile and laugh through pulpy mouthfuls of masticated cucumber. By then, it’s less of a commercial for an iPhone and more of a surreal illustration of the kind of life you could have in a world where everything is pickled and pickles are everything.

But to the story, that is to say, the actual narrative of The Pickle Index in all of its iterations: In an oppressive autocracy, Zloty Kornblatt and his sad little circus couldn’t get a laugh if they tried. But then one fateful night — through a series of comical mishaps, and without trying at all — he is unintentionally funny, and accidentally impersonates The Prime Mother of their government, Madam J, and her beloved pet octopus Simeon. Zloty brings down the house, but unfortunately, there’s an informer in the audience. The next day, he is gone, taken in the night, leaving his inept, ragtag group of performers to head to the capital city to find him and bring him home.

This story, told in alternating chapters, is narrated by Flora, Zloty’s assistant, and is ostensibly being written down by her and fed into The Pickle Index, the city’s cumbersome cucumber (Forgive me!) network, full of briny and fermented recipes for citizens to make in their own homes. The chapters between Flora’s narration take the form of columns from the local newspaper, The Daily Scrutinizer. Zloty has been taken, Hank Hamper writes, because of his subversion. But Hank’s absurd allegations have a sinister edge: Zloty is in danger of perfunctory trial and a seemingly infinite menu of outlandish execution methods.

There are three ways to experience The Pickle Index, all of which can stand on their own. The first is its paperback novel, which is entirely text aside from small black-and-white woodcuts. The second is a hardcover, two-book set. These books are gorgeously illustrated by Ian Huebert, but they stand out for other reasons. The two books are not simply the paperback with color; instead, they are the two types of chapters separated: the “News” (from The Daily Scrutinizer) and the “Snacks” (Flora’s more or less straightforward narration of the story). These books can be read separately, but the illustrations in each encourage the reader to read the books back and forth, or at the very least turn and twirl the illustrations to see how they connect with, compliment, or contradict each other.

As for the app, it is different thing entirely, while still being more of the same. Within the app are the two sections yet again: the newspaper, and Flora’s chapters nestled amongst the Index. Once the reader has read the necessarily elements, they can progress through the story in real time, or with the narrative accelerated. Additionally, the app has one-off jokes and minor side plots — including two soldiers trapped in a submarine together, squabbling in the Q&A section. You, the reader, are also integrated into this frustrating world, and have to (among other things) manipulate the Index’s deliberately clunky interface.

Eli Horowitz is known for his multi-platform, interactive literary collaborations, including The Silent History, which tracked a fictional epidemic of muteness across time and distance, and was a print novel and an app. He has an active interest in form. And in many ways, The Pickle Index is a delight — the narration is laugh-out-loud funny. There is a certain pathos, though, that doesn’t quite come through; this is a project with slightly more style than substance.

In an ideal world, each form wouldn’t have just been its own experience; together, they should have generated new questions, something greater than the sum of their parts. But for readers who are interested in the potential energy of form, or Horowitz’s oeuvre, The Pickle Index is a fun, strange romp through (last one, promise) an absurdly cured world.

Carmen Maria Machado has written for The New Yorker, The Paris Review and AGNI, among other publications.

By Melanie Kallas Ricklefs   –   Thurston Talk

For the past three years, Leta Sperry has been impressing the judges at the Olympia Supply Company’s Annual Pickle Contest with a recipe she calls “Ole Quebec Bread and Butter Pickles.” It’s a family recipe handed down to her by her father in-law, who at the age of 89, has a long history of pickling every year for friends and family. The Ole Quebec recipe has won her the Sweet Pickle title for three years running, and while she wants to keep that particular recipe in the family, she has agreed to share her pickling tips, along with her highly sought after Dilly Bean recipe.

The first time Leta won the Pickle Contest, she was so proud of her achievement that she couldn’t help but tell everyone who would listen. When she won for the second time, she knew she had an outstanding recipe. Her prizes included a $50 gift card to Olympia Supply Company, which has an entire section devoted to home food preservation, and a large bag filled with canning supplies, many of which she still uses. This year, she was confident in her recipe, but remained cautiously optimistic. She was overjoyed to receive the call letting her know that she was still the reigning champion of the Sweet Pickle Category.

Canning and pickling has always been a part of family life for Leta. Her grandmother had a huge farm and canned everything she could to make maximum use of the harvest while preserving the flavors of summer and fall to be enjoyed throughout the year. While Leta still uses her grandmother’s pressure canner, it was her mother who taught her the most about food preservation. They started out with jams and jellies, and progressed to pickling cucumbers, tomatoes, and fruits.

Thirty-six years ago, as a young mom with babies to feed, Leta would can peaches, pears, and other fruits to make her own baby food. At the time, she was living in Yakima where fruit was plentiful, and her canning took off. During that time, she started canning tomatoes, often 30 to 40 quarts per year. She entered many of her canned goods into competition at the Yakima County Fair, now theCentral Washington State Fair, and won first prize with her tomatoes, tomato sauce, salsa, and pressure-canned carrots and green beans.

Leta explained that highly acidic foods, such as tomatoes, can be canned in a hot water bath while low-acid foods like carrots and green beans require pressure canning to preserve them safely. When asked for tips about canning and pickling, Leta said simply “follow the recipe.” In the past, Leta has tinkered with some of her family recipes to try to reduce sodium or sugar, and the results have never been as tasty as the original recipe. That being said, if you want to deviate from the original recipe, take detailed notes with each batch, to document what works and what doesn’t.

Leta’s pickles and dilly beans are made from her homegrown organic produce.  According to Leta, it doesn’t make much difference which cucumber variety you use for your pickles, as long as it grows well in your area. She recommends Straight Eight Cucumbers in Olympia because they are well-suited to the climate in western Washington.

While Leta’s Ole Quebec Bread and Butter Pickles have won her accolades in competition, she also enjoys making dill pickles. Her favorite method for making dill pickles is refrigeration. Making refrigerator pickles is incredibly easy, and while they don’t last as long as canned pickles, they stay crunchy. The heat from canning cooks the cucumbers a bit, which increases their shelf life, but reduces their crunch.

Leta has always seen canning as an essential skill, and has made sure that her daughter and daughters-in-law have learned the art of preservation. Even if you will never need to preserve food to survive, canned and pickled foods make special homemade gifts. They also provide something of value to trade with your neighbors and friends for their cherished goodies.

Leta’s Dilly Beans

(Makes 4 jars)

3 pounds green beans, trimmed

1 ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

6 whole cloves garlic

6 whole heads dill

3 ¾ cups water

3 ¾ cups Vinegar

Pack the beans lengthwise into hot Ball jars, leaving ¼ inch head space at the top of the jar. To each pint, add ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper, 1 clove of garlic, and one head of dill. Combine the remaining ingredients in a sauce pan and bring them to a boil. Pour (while boiling hot) over beans, leaving ¼ inch of head space at the top of the jar. Adjust caps onto the jars. Process the filled jars in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes. Let beans stand for two weeks to allow the flavor to develop.

KEVIN BROOKER, SWERVE
More from Kevin Brooker, Swerve

I had the good fortune of touring Poland a number of years back, when glasnost was still young. I went expecting austerity, and was shocked to find myself eating some of the best meals of my life. Poland gets called Eastern Europe, but it’s really dead-centre. Consequently, its complex food traditions (and supply lines) span the old world heartland, from Germany to Russia and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. It’s in no way surprising that ur-foodie Martha Stewart was born Martha Kostyra, full-blooded Pole. And Calgary, it turns out, is unexpectedly rich in this food tradition, thanks to a handful of delicatessens with ties to the motherland—most of which happen to be on the city’s south side at places like Cracovia, Old Fashion Meats and Heritage Bakery.

Acadia’s Polcan is one of the more popular spots, where you can smell the smokehouse the minute you hit the strip-mall parking lot. Polcan does the Euro mini-supermarket thing well, with tiny, packed aisles next to a busy meat counter where the focus is obviously on the many varieties of sausage and cold cuts. Like everything else here, they’re the real deal. Out front, the fresh-bread racks feature a dozen species of rye and as many kinds of poppy-seed pastries. In the cold case there’s twarog, dry curd cheese which is the central ingredient in Poland’s distinct style of cheesecake, and oscypek, smoked sheep’s cheese from Zakopane, the Banff of Poland. There’s even a special cream cheese made specifically for baking—and a refrigerated case of creamy pastries to inspire you. Polcan also has a small steam table for reasonably priced takeout or eat-in, with classics like perogies, cabbage rolls and bigos, the national dish: a hunter’s stew of sauerkraut and mixed meats (but always the house kielbasa).

Don’t ignore the aisles, though, where pantry treasures abound. Most Canadians already know one Polish standard—polski ogorki—or at least, the Canadianized version of the dill pickle. These delis have scores of more authentic pickle variants worth trying, including beets, peppers, carrots and mushrooms. They’re also a condiment paradise, with more approaches to horseradish, mayonnaise and mustard than you could ever imagine. Apple horseradish? Don’t knock it until you try it. You’ll find that many of the products only have Polish labels (unless you count that poorly informative white sticker that satisfies French-English labelling laws), but almost all of them have excellent pictures. By the way, although many of Calgary’s 30,000 or so Poles are recent immigrants, you won’t have a problem dealing in English.

I would also urge you to explore the fruit side. I’ve always found packaged European juices to be somehow richer than ours, and Poland’s are among the best. The nation produces first-class pears, apricots, plums, blueberries, cranberries, currants and, my personal favourite, sour cherries (see sidebar). All of them come in numerous forms, including fruit-only, jams, compotes and syrups.

Fortunately for us left-bankers, there is a Polish treasure north of the Bow. Jan’s Meats and Deli is the dziadek (grand-daddy) on the Calgary scene, with nearly three decades of service. An easy right turn off Crowchild northbound, its convenience is only exceeded by its excellence. Jan offers bespoke charcuterie, of course, but he also provides something pretty rare around here these days: a full-service butchery with high quality and reasonable prices. Order ground beef or pork and it goes through the grinder right on the spot. It’s also my go-to place if I need a custom cut like a crown roast.

Jan sells bulk house-made sauerkraut, herring, dills, smoked mackerel and a variety of prepared foods on the perogie and cabbage-roll spectrum. Its dairy case, too, teems with goodness. Try the supremely rich MC Dairy brand sour cream—for example, in a salad with cucumber, lemon juice and fresh dill—for an instant taste of Polish summer.

Pucker Up

Sour cherries—Prunus cerasus—come in many preserved forms. The jams are tart and wonderful, while the juice makes a great soda splash. Use a jar of them in light syrup as a filling in sweet perogies, the perfect way to celebrate Poland’s independence day, November 11.

By ANDREA TUDHOPE   –   KCUR.ORG

Pickling is a trend picking up all over the country, and Elise Landry, sous chef at Ça Va in Kansas City’s Westport neighborhood, is pickling everything. Turnips, husk cherries, shallots … you name it, she’s pickled it.

“The other day I was called a pickled petunia by a customer, which I’ll always remember,” she laughs.

Initially, Landry started pickling to keep the seasonal produce she got from the Brookside Farmer’s Market fresh. But it’s gone far beyond practicalities.

“I’ve had a lot of great feedback,” she says. “They’re all housemade pickles. People get that, and they love it. They’re like, ‘Did you make all of these pickles?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah! This is my way of preserving summer and spring on a plate for you to enjoy.’”

When pickling, Elise says, first you have to process the produce. Slicing or dicing, slightly roasting or blanching — all of these methods ensure that the flavors of the brine will permeate the fruits and vegetables.

Whether making a traditional pickle with cucumbers, or pickling a fruit or vegetable, the pickling liquid remains standard.

“My general rule of thumb for a really basic pickle is equal parts vinegar and sugar, and half a part water,” Landry says.

Other ingredients and variations are up to preference. You can pair certain spices and various kinds of vinegar depending on what you’re pickling. For peaches, Landry pairs rosemary sprigs. For green tomatoes, she adds a dash of turmeric for a bit of flavor, but mostly to preserve and enhance the natural, lime green hue of the tomatoes. For red onions or red beets, she uses red wine vinegar.

After you bring those ingredients to a slow boil over medium heat, allowing the sugar and spices to dissolve together, you pour the hot liquid right over the produce. Cool it to room temperature, then store it.

Landry’s go-to method is known as quick pickling. It’s just one of various pickling methods that have become popular, including salt brining, vinegar brining and fermentation.

Though her pickling may be fast and, she claims, ‘simple,’ the results are complex and tasty, not to mention well-utilized throughout the menu at Ça Va. Even during brunch on Sundays, you can build your own mimosas using shrubs and syrups crafted from muddled pickles and brines.

“When I break down what makes something taste really good, it’s the perfect balance between fat and acid,” Landry says.

And pickles, she says, are a great way to bring that acid, and a little crunch and bite, to any dish.