When in a Pickling Pickle…

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The following is an excerpt from Becky Krystal’s article “When in a pickling pickle, how D.C. food businesses get around shortages,” appearing April 15 at www.washingtonpost.com

“The world was full of panic — and mock panic — early this year when Chipotle pulled carnitas from some of its restaurants after a pork supplier was found to be violating the chain’s animal-treatment standards. The shortage continues, with no end in sight.

What if that had happened to a small business? What do you do when even the slightest fluctuation in ingredient supplies can have an outsize impact on your bottom line? 

That is the kind of dilemma local restaurateurs and food business owners run into regularly. Weather can wreak particular havoc, as we all learned in last year’s margarita-threatening lime shortage.

Yi Wah Roberts, co-founder of fermented foods business Number 1 Sons, also got a firsthand lesson in the power of Mother Nature last year.

When it came to formulating their pickles, Roberts and his sister Caitlin decided that cucumbers from several West Virginia farms made superior half-sours, dills and more. “The cucumber pickles make up probably two-thirds of our sales,” Roberts said.

So imagine their dismay when Number 1 Sons ran out them last year, a development Roberts attributed to both their popularity and a shortage of cucumbers from growers. He would have preferred to have stocked up on cucumbers to cure and sell over the winter, but that wasn’t possible. Roberts said the farmers typically do two cucumber plantings, and the second planting did not yield the expected amount of produce.

Could such a thing be avoided in the future? Roberts’s light-bulb moment came recently when he attended a sustainable agriculture conference, where he learned what affected the second harvest: downy mildew. Because it can’t survive cold temperatures, the mildew surfaces late in the growing season after it blows north from Florida. It can take out cucumber plants in days, he said.

Roberts has talked to a scientist at Cornell University who is developing a mildew-resistant version of a pickling cucumber. (Most research so far has focused on slicing cucumbers, he said.) Number 1 Sons is also working with a seed grower in Virginia who will provide Roberts with mildew-resistant seeds to share at farmers markets with growers and customers. Both Bigg Riggs Farm and Spring Valley Farm and Orchard have agreed to try growing the in- development variety of cucumber.

“That is a potential success,” Roberts said. “The payoff’s a little further down the road, but it’s worth it.”

Knowing that the cucumber supply is at risk prompted Roberts to look at other ways to diversify and experiment. When he started polling fellow farmers-market vendors for ideas, he learned that they’re frequently left with extra chili peppers, which look great on the sales table but don’t always get cleared out by shoppers. Now Roberts plans to make hot sauce to sell this season.”

Krystal, Becky. “When in a Pickling Pickle, How D.C. Food Business Get Around Shortages.”  The Washington Post.  Washington Post, 15 April 2015.  Web.

Read the whole article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/how-local-food-businesses-handle-ingredient-shortages-and-challenges/2015/04/13/bcd777bc-d706-11e4-b3f2-607bd612aeac_story.html

Pickle and Pepper Fun Facts

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  • Pickling is one of the oldest forms of food preservation, discovered at the dawn of civilization, thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia.
  • North Americans prefer pickles with warts. Europeans prefer wartless pickles. Refrigerated pickles account for about 20 percent of all pickle sales.
  • International Pickle Week is one of the country’s longest running food promotions –it’s been observed for more than 50 years. IPW actually runs for 10 days during the last two weeks of May.
  • According to the U.S. Supreme Court, pickles are technically a “fruit” of the vine (like tomatoes), but they are generally known as a vegetable.
  • Americans consume more than 2.5 billion pounds of pickles each year – that’s 20 billion pickles! And since it takes almost 4 billion pickles to reach the moon, all the pickles we eat would reach the moon and back more than 2 times!
  • Pickle Packers International has its own official limerick and theme song – the Pickle Polka. The pickle got its name in the 1300s when English speaking people mispronounced William Beukelz’ name – he was a Dutch fisherman known for pickling fish.
  • The phrase “in a pickle” was first introduced by Shakespeare in his play, The Tempest. The quotes read, “How cam’st thou in this pickle?” and “I have been in such a pickle�”
  • On his voyage in 1492, Columbus not only discovered America, but gave peppers their name. In search of black pepper from the Orient, he assumed the spicy pods used to flavor foods in America were a form of black pepper and mistakenly called them “pimiento,” or pepper. Actually, the plants are not related at all.
  • The “hot” sensation one experiences when eating pickled peppers is caused by Capsaicin. This powerful substance can be detected at one part in a trillion.
  • During WWII the U.S. Government tagged 40 percent of all pickle production for the ration kits of the armed forces.
  • When you eat hot peppers, the pain receptors on the tongue react and cause a physical reaction called “sweating.” You start to salivate and perspire, your nose runs, your metabolism speeds up – this is all the body’s reaction working to cool itself.
  • Good pickles have an audible crunch at 10 paces. This can be measured at “crunch-off” using the “scientific” device known as the Audible Crunch Meter. Pickles that can be heard at only one pace are known as denture dills.