https://www.grillos.com All it took was a push from my nutritionist. (Of course I have a nutritionist, I live in California! No, seriously, I go to the nutritionist because I have insanely high cholesterol when untreated. But now with a combination of Crestor and Zetia Boston Heart tells me my numbers are very low, in the green, if you know Boston Heart...) Susan said, almost as an aside, to eat some fermented foods, she recommended pickles and sauerkraut... And that was all I needed to hear. There are no illegal foods in Susan's world, but really, you should shy away from carbs and since I'm insulin resistant... (I know that's popular jargon, but if you feel a bit sleepy and out of it after eating pasta, you might be insulin resistant too...like cholesterol, it's got a genetic component.) So when Susan recommends a food I actually like... Not that I'd been eating pickles on a regular basis. Maybe when I went to the deli. But I've been trying to avoid that, since it comes with pastrami and other foods that should not be eaten on a regular basis. Now growing up, I ate a ton of pickles. There were two giant jars in the garage. Homemade things, the kind of stuff kids today would never touch. But growing up in the dark ages... One jar had green tomato pickles, the other sour dills. You rarely see green tomato pickles anymore, because of their bite. You chomp down on them like an apple, and you get the crunch of the veins and the oozing of the fluid and a sour sensation all at the same time. Let's just say they wake you up. And back in the fifties, even the sixties, most people were eating bland food. But not Jews! My father was an epicurean. A veritable gourmet. He'd take us for Italian ice on Sundays and late at night he'd stop at Zwerdling's bakery to buy rolls hot off the press... There's nothing like truly fresh bread. And my dad bought the above pickles, along with lox and whitefish and sable and bagels, at Max's delicatessen. (One of their specialties was chive cheese, unlike the kind you see today, as in there were almost as many chives as cheese!) Now somewhere in the sixties Max handed the reins to Sam, and it was now called Sam's, but Sam had worked there all the while and the store was still the same. You don't get the same experience today, it's kind of like the long lamented hardware store where the proprietor knew your name... My father was beyond a regular, he'd run around the store sampling things... So I was taught the only good pickles, the only ones worth eating, were the outliers that were handmade and proffered at places like Max's/Sam's. Especially back then, pickles were bland. Now pickles did have a moment back in the eighties, with the movie "Crossing Delancey," when that was Peter Riegert's business and the issue was whether it was too déclassé a job for Amy Irving...and whatever happened to her? But they've never been hip. But the ones you get in the store are much better. So after that session with the nutritionist I was combing the aisles at Costco, something I love to do, kind of like exploring the offerings on the Netflix homepage, and in the refrigerated section I found this big plastic bucket of pickles. I debated whether to buy it. The problem with Costco is the deals are so good that you're overcome with temptation and find yourself at home with more than you could ever consume, unless you have a family, and I do not. But pickles? Don't they last a long time? So I put the bucket in my cart. Now opening this bucket of pickles was not simple. It looks like you have to rip off a plastic band, but really you only have to break this one tab to open the bucket up. But then... You're confronted with the fact that the bucket is packed full. It's impossible to open it without getting pickle juice over everything. Which is an incentive to eat a bunch of pickles, because then the volume goes down and the pickle juice level descends... And I was stunned how good these pickles were. Not exactly like the ones at Max's/Sam's, but these were store bought, made for mass consumption. Those pickles were Grillo's. Not that I thought much of it. I mean you can buy great stuff at Costco, but I wouldn't think it would purvey the paragon of pickles. The absolute zenith. But I did expect such at Gelson's, the local high end market. Which offered Mt. Olive. Nowhere close. So I went back to Costco... And they haven't had them since! But a couple of months back, driving my cart down the aisle at City Market in Vail, I saw them. Of course in a smaller container, but they were Grillo's. I didn't buy them that day, I'm trying to remember why, maybe I was in somewhat of a rush, but the next time I went back to City Market... I couldn't find them. And the problem is I only like to do things when everybody else does not. Meaning I'll go for my tostada at Poquito Mas at three in the afternoon, when I can get a parking spot and sit in the booth without feeling guilty about taking up space. And I shop late in the evening, as Paul Simon would do. Midnight is a good time for me, however City Market in Vail is only open until ten. Now the problem with City Market in Vail is after about six, the meat slicer at the deli counter disappears. And they have Boar's Head meats, which are the best of the over the counter, no Oscar Mayer for me, so I try to shop a bit earlier, but I got engaged in a long conversation with Charley, who was lending me his car for this grocery sojourn, and I missed the window. And, since it was later in the day, very few people were working there. Would there really be someone who knew where the Grillo's pickles were? Now I must admit I spent way too much time looking before I asked. My father constantly implored us to ask, he was uninhibited, maybe that's why I'm shy, but finally I found someone who looked like he knew what was going on and he led me to the Grillo's pickles. And that's when it all became clear, unlike seemingly every other pickle brand they're refrigerated! Why, I can't tell you, since pickles are often brined in open-air casks, even by the railroad tracks. And when I got back to the condo, VOILA! But back in L.A., I've run out of luck, I can't find Grillo's pickles seemingly anywhere. And then the other day on a quick run to Whole Foods, waiting for my sliced roast beef (it's the best there, it's salt-cured), I was looking over my shoulder and I saw them, Grillo's pickles! Now ultimately I realized there was a tiny little red dot on the bucket, saying they were "Hot," but I can handle it. Actually, I ate a bunch before I even noticed the labeling. And then, just the other day, I saw a link for the Wirecuttter, hyping the fact that they rated store bought pickles. So I clicked on over, looking for what was the best, I'm all about the best when it comes to food and other low-priced items, and I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I was rooting for Grillo's, but what were the odds? And then... GRILLO'S WAS NUMBER ONE! https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-pickles/ So what I'm doing here is hipping you to Grillo's. If you ever get a hankering for a pickle, if you like something with a bit of bite, that is not bland, they fit the bill perfectly. This has been a public service announcement. P.S. Only when I began writing this did my brain connect pickles to a story I read in yesterday's "Wall Street Journal," about the people in Trump's cabinet on fermented food diets. I guess my nutritionist was ahead of the game. "Everyone in Trump’s Cabinet Is Eating Sauerkraut - JD Vance, RFK Jr. and other officials swear by a diet of grass-fed meat and fermented foods, even when the sulfurous odors cause friction at home" https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/fitness/trump-vance-lutnick-rfk-sauerkraut-diet-2f33bdf1 https://apple.news/A85-8CdS6Sm6MJ8jPvbyt0A -- Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ -- Listen to the podcast: -iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp -- http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz -- If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25 To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
