Grandma's Watermelon Rind Pickles
Aug. 1st, 2008 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarkerYou know how sometimes a memory just sort of pops up, and if you share it with people, you're likely to find out that they have similar memories?
Last weekend, we had a barbecue with some of the students. In the process, I ended up driving out to a local farmer's stand to pick up a watermelon that they were keeping in the cooler for us. A couple of the students went with me, and along the way one of them asked, "Do Americans eat watermelon like Japanese?" I laughed and said, "Yes, Americans like to eat watermelon in the summer. It's very cheap, and also bigger and long watermelons. Maybe not as round and sweet as Japanese watermelons." Then he wondered about how you cut the watermelon -- he knows how to cut a round one, but he thought a long one would be hard to cut. So we talked about that for a moment.
Then I reminisced about my grandmother in Ohio making watermelon rind pickles. The ones she made were sweet pickles, and I loved them. One of the students immediately chimed in with memories of the pickles that his grandmother had made, and we chatted about the way that the farm country folks seemed to use things up much more carefully than most people do now, and that pickling was a good alternative when you didn't have refrigeration so widely available.
Grandma's watermelon rind pickles -- who would have thought that Grandma's pickles would be a common memory between Japan and the U.S.?
Y'a know, I may have to see if I can find a recipe for those pickles. I'll bet I can't get them to taste as good as she did, but . . .
Last weekend, we had a barbecue with some of the students. In the process, I ended up driving out to a local farmer's stand to pick up a watermelon that they were keeping in the cooler for us. A couple of the students went with me, and along the way one of them asked, "Do Americans eat watermelon like Japanese?" I laughed and said, "Yes, Americans like to eat watermelon in the summer. It's very cheap, and also bigger and long watermelons. Maybe not as round and sweet as Japanese watermelons." Then he wondered about how you cut the watermelon -- he knows how to cut a round one, but he thought a long one would be hard to cut. So we talked about that for a moment.
Then I reminisced about my grandmother in Ohio making watermelon rind pickles. The ones she made were sweet pickles, and I loved them. One of the students immediately chimed in with memories of the pickles that his grandmother had made, and we chatted about the way that the farm country folks seemed to use things up much more carefully than most people do now, and that pickling was a good alternative when you didn't have refrigeration so widely available.
Grandma's watermelon rind pickles -- who would have thought that Grandma's pickles would be a common memory between Japan and the U.S.?
Y'a know, I may have to see if I can find a recipe for those pickles. I'll bet I can't get them to taste as good as she did, but . . .
