Tuesday, April 12, 2005

ogorki a-hoy



The picture above is an old German satirical picture from the wonderful Food Mania. I tried to figure it out but I couldn't. Something about the economy going to shit and immigration? Anyway, some gratuitous stories about pickles to accompany it...

1) On Saturday night people were amused at John's Russian party that I had brought a jar of pickles with me. But the pickle chaser is my favourite - nothing better gets the taste of a shot of cheap vodka out of your mouth and nothing complements good vodka better.

2) When my sister Marion was seeing The Pianist in Poland there was a man sitting behind who didn't have very good eyesight - a woman accompanying him was explaining things to him. The mood was sombre and grim, as you'd expect in a holocaust film, until a scene which featured a big jar of pickles. "What are they?" the man said "Ogorki" the woman whispered. "What?"
"OGORKI!". I still think of this and chuckle whenever I see a jar of Polski Ogorki - the only style pickle to eat.

3) When I was about 12 we took my friend Chris Evans on a family camping trip. He had never eaten pickles before and had to be goaded into trying them. He thought they were really weird. I thought he was a freak for not loving them. Luckily my friends now have better taste. On a recent camping trip with 4 mates we had to buy 2 jars of Bick's Polski Ogorki everytime we hit a town.

4 comments:

Suebob said...

The old scanned picture thing is working out quite well for you, actually. It makes for a lovely blog.

Anonymous said...

picklez yo!! orsum. my grandma used to have these ones called bread-and-butter cucumbers that were gaufrette sliced like crinkle-cut chips. they were really sweet and disgusting.

esther i think that if i were to take one piece of useful advice from our almost-15-year (!) friendship it would be you wise words about pickles: avoid sweet-and-sour at all costs and try very hard to never buy pickles made in australia. fuck buying your kids a job, polish kids need jobs too. also your genius in combining pickles with peanut butter in a sandwich scenario. yum.

*standing ovation for pickle-centric blog post*

xxnell

ps i have been working very hard on the cookbook, i am very excited about it and so is my mum.

joe cupcake said...

why thank you both...
i'm glad you're enjoying the pics suebob... the ogorki one is pretty awesome isn't it?

and yes i agree that bread-and-butter cucumbers are a bit gross.. i don't like how they are soft..although the crinkle cut thing is quite cool.

mmm.. pickle sandwiches, there's a whole post in them..

Unknown said...

I found a pickle that is as good as Bicks and a lot cheaper. $6 Australian for a 1.95kg jar.
They are sooooooooo good.
I can't stay away from them!