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When I was a kid, my grandma used to make family-famous pickles. She also made cinnamon-swirl bread, macaroni and cheese, boysenberry and strawberry jam, and lots of other yummy stuff, but we did love those pickles. We’d jump for joy every time we saw a jar of them emerge from a mailed care package or from grandma’s suitcase when she came to visit. My sister and I called them bug pickles, because there were some sort of black balls of spice floating around in the pickle juice.
When I was in college and grandma was getting older, she slowed down on the jam- and pickle-making and I decided that it was time for me to learn all her tricks so I could continue the family tradition. It was only then that I found out the little bugs were actually cassia buds, which are the unopened flowers of cinnamon trees. We had to order the unusual spice online because she was out and couldn’t find more at the market. (Pickling isn’t quite as popular as it once was, after all.) She was nervous about buying online, the concept being new back then and all. Man, I guess it was longer ago than I thought.
(In addition to the pickling cucumbers, the flowers are also from our CSA share this week. Is our farm great, or what?)
And so I learned to make pickles in Grandma’s California kitchen, which had fun stools that you could spin around in and a set of large, wooden cutlery — fork, spoon and knife — hanging on the wall.
We also made jam, straining out the seeds from the boysenberries that she grew in her backyard, getting all steamy as the jars sterilized. We went to the kitchen store to get me a solid, non-stick pot I could take home to make more jam on my own. I think that was the beginning of the tradition of Grandma buying me presents for the kitchen. I think at least half of what’s in my cabinets came from her generosity.
It’s a very nice memory for me, the jam and the bug pickles. I couldn’t help but think of Grandma when I sliced up the pickling cucumbers we got from the farm this week — especially because she recently passed away and the loss is still tender.
Is this Grandma’s pickle recipe? No, not quite. She did things the old-fashioned and labor-intensive way, using a pickle crock and a process that took several days. I even have a pickling crock of my own, gathering dust in the garage at the moment because, well, the process is just LONG. And I am lazy. These are refrigerator pickles, which are ready to eat in only three hours and still last for up to three months.
But even though the recipe didn’t call for it specifically, I reached back into my spice cabinet and pulled out my cassia buds. They smell a little sweet and earthy. I went ahead and poured some of them into my pickling mixture, stirring in some of the “bugs” of my happy childhood memories.
And I thought of Grandma. I hope that she knows that even if she’s no longer physically present, she will always have a place in my life, in my heart and in my kitchen. It’s through such rituals and traditions that we connect with the ones we love, and I can’t wait to give my little niece some of these yummy bug pickles so she can have some great food memories of her own.
