A GALLON jar of pickles sits near the register at Lee’s Washerette and Food Market, a mustard-colored cinder-block bunker on the western fringe of this Mississippi Delta town.
Those pickles were once mere dills. They were once green. Their exteriors remain pebbly, a reminder that long ago they began their lives on a farm, on the ground, as cucumbers.
But they now have an arresting color that combines green and garnet, and a bracing sour-sweet taste that they owe to a long marinade in cherry or tropical fruit or strawberry Kool-Aid.
Kool-Aid pickles violate tradition, maybe even propriety. Depending on your palate and perspective, they are either the worst thing to happen to pickles since plastic brining barrels or a brave new taste sensation to be celebrated.
The pickles have been spotted as far afield as Dallas and St. Louis, but their cult is thickest in the Delta region, among the black majority population. In the Delta, where they fetch between 50 cents and a dollar, Kool-Aid pickles have earned valued space next to such beloved snacks as pickled eggs and pigs’ feet at community fairs, convenience stores and filling stations. And as their appeal has widened, some people have seen a good business opportunity. Even the lawyers have gotten involved.
Children are the primary consumers, but a recent trip through the region revealed that the market for Kool-Aid pickles is maturing.
At Carver Upper Elementary School in Indianola, students in Jodi Sumner’s third-grade class have no reservations about the propriety of cucumbers flavored with vinegar and drink mix. When this writer, lugging a jar of tropical-fruit-flavored pickles, recently asked the 29 students who liked to eat Kool-Aid pickles, 29 hands shot up.
The names came fast: Ladarius, Fredericka and Kobreana, among others. So did the impressions: “It’s a candy pickle.” And “I like it the same as dipping hot Cheetos in ice cream.” And “Have you ever tried one with a watermelon Blow Pop?” followed by a pantomime of how the Blow Pop stick can be inserted so that the candy appears as a knob at one end of the pickle, allowing the eater to alternate between bites of sour-sweet pickle and licks of sweet-sour Blow Pop.
Nobody knows just who first decided that pickles would be improved by a bath in sugared drink mix, or when, but the invention seems to be of fairly recent provenance. Typically, Kool-Aid pickle fans were born some time after Bill Clinton moved into the White House.
Billie Williams, 56, a special-education teacher at Carver Elementary, never saw one when she was a child. But she did eat dill pickles impaled on peppermint sticks, and she remembers how friends sucked the juice from cut lemons through peppermint sticks repurposed as straws. “That’s the same kind of taste,” she said. “Same as how they used to dip pickle spears in dry Kool-Aid mix for that pucker.”
The school sells Kool-Aid pickles from the popular red flavor family at its fund-raisers. “They’re easy to make a gallon,” Ms. Williams said. “You pull the pickles from the jar, cut them in halves, make double-strength Kool-Aid, add a pound of sugar, shake and let it sit — best in the refrigerator — for about a week. The taste takes to anything. A while back I made a mistake and bought a jar of pickle chips instead of halves or wholes. Came out fine. This whole Kool-Aid pickle thing is going so good, you wonder why somebody hasn’t put a patent on them.”
No patent application has been filed, but the name Kool-Aid is a trademark owned by Kraft Foods. Upon learning of the pickles, Bridget MacConnell, a senior manager of corporate affairs at Kraft, recovered, and then pronounced, “We endorse our consumers’ finding innovative ways to use our products.”
Most of the children at Carver — perhaps most of the children in the Delta — buy their Kool-Aid pickles from unlicensed house stores, operated by neighborhood elders who, seated at their kitchen tables, sell snacks and chips and candy to anyone who comes knocking. (If these folks sold whiskey instead of pickles, their enterprises would be known as shot houses.) Ms. Sumner’s students praised in particular “the lady on Quick Circle whose dogs bark when you walk up” and “the woman who stays on Slim Street who sells nachos, too.”
At the Stephensville Mini-Mart, set amid the cotton fields and catfish ponds between Shaw and Indianola, the owner, Hugh Davis, began stocking Kool-Aid pickles earlier this year at the behest of local children. “They’re not for me,” said Mr. Davis, 66. “It’s the kids who’ve done it. They’ll create a line of food for you; they’ll dab a little something here and there and make it their own. They’re good at inventing.”
Recently, some Delta grocers began selling jars of ready-made pickles. And entrepreneurs are emerging. At Lambard’s Wholesale Meats in Cleveland, Allen Williams sells plastic gallon jugs of Best Maid dills, plastered with the Kool-Aid packs that denote the flavor within. (Mr. Williams declined to reveal who actually makes his Kool-Aid pickles.)
Across town at Eastend Grocery, Beverly and Claud Boddie stand behind their products. They have honed proprietary recipes for green and red flavors that involve piercing the pickles with a fork and stirring together multiple Kool-Aid flavors to achieve maximum pucker. Ms. Boddie, 37, wants to apply for a trademark as “soon as I can raise some money and settle on a name.”
She’d better get a move on. Double Quick, the Indianola-based chain of more than 30 Delta convenience stores (famous in some circles for a singing group, the Double Quick Gospel Choir, composed of store managers and supervisors), has begun pursuing a trademark for Koolickle, a name coined by Rick Beuning, its director of food service. “I’m a white boy from the Midwest,” said Mr. Beuning, 53. “This isn’t my food, but I know a good product when I see one.”
Ice cream and bacon might not sound good together, but in general, I like each of them separately so I'd be open to the possibility that such a combination would be good. Kool-aid and pickles on the other hand is an aberration most unholy.
Ice cream and bacon are good together. We don't need Jon here to defend that statement, Khan. One hundred percent of this forum's administrators can vouch for bacony ice creamy goodness.
I don't think I can trust mario's word for that. Your's maybe. Not mario though. Still, you DO live in California now, and with a guy named mario no less, so I'm not too sure about you anymore. Jon on the other hand is a stable guy and I'd be inclined to put some level of trust in his word.
Illithid's and my next door neighbor three years back was a strong advocate of Red Gatorade and Cheerios. I was skeptical, but it was indeed delicious.
Skins Portis, Samuels ridicule dog fighting as crime
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- Washington Redskins players Clinton Portis and Chris Samuels defended Michael Vick on Monday by ridiculing the notion that dog fighting is considered a crime.
In an interview with WAVY-TV, Portis said that if the Atlanta Falcons quarterback is charged and convicted of being involved in a dog fighting operation, then authorities would be "putting him behind bars for no reason."
"I don't know if he was fighting dogs or not," Portis said. "But it's his property; it's his dogs. If that's what he wants to do, do it."
Portis said dog fighting is a "prevalent" part of life.
Portis, a native of Laurel, Mississippi, added: "I know a lot of back roads that got a dog fight if you want to go see it. But they're not bothering those people because those people are not big names. I'm sure there's some police got some dogs that are fighting them, some judges got dogs and everything else."
"Politicians," added Samuels, who found it hard to keep from giggling while Portis was talking.
"Presidents," added Portis with a laugh.
Vick has been under investigation since April 25 when police conducting a drug investigation raided the house owned by the quarterback in rural Surry County and found dozens of dogs. They also found items associated with dog fighting, including a "pry bar" used to pry apart a dog's jaws. No charges have been filed.
Dog fighting is a felony in Virginia, but Portis said that if Vick is charged and convicted, "Then I think he got cheated. ... You're putting him behind bars for no reason -- over a dog fight."
"Haven't you seen Animal Planet?" Samuels added with a giggle.
Hours after making light of the possible crime in the television interview, Portis issued a statement late Monday through the Redskins.
"In the recent interview I gave concerning dog fighting, I want to make it clear I do not take part in dog fighting or condone dog fighting in any manner," the statement said.
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Paula Abdul broke her nose over the weekend after she fell while trying to avoid stepping on her Chihuahua, her publicist said Monday.
Abdul was recovering from the mishap and will appear on "American Idol" Tuesday and its season finale Wednesday, publicist David Brokaw said.
"She's a little sore, but is doing fine," he said.
Abdul told the syndicated entertainment TV show "Extra" she tore cartilage in her nose and fractured her toe.
"I took a nasty fall ... trying not to hurt my dog. I bruised myself on my arm ... my chest, my waist all the way down to my hip. All from my little chubby Tulip," Abdul said.
Customs officers at Cairo's airport have detained a man bound for Saudi Arabia who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes on a plane, airport authorities said.
"It feels really good," Jamison, of Pickensville, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big."
Comments
If you know what I mean.
I'd think it a joke too.
EDIT: The news I mean.
Wazzat?
I want one.
Aren't we all?
Really?
.... is it opposite day again?
I am agreeable!!
Joking or Serious? I honestly can't tell.
I don't feel bad for laughing.
Emphasis mine.