Among the many, many foods we ate during our Thanksgiving, we tried something new: pickled pumpkins. My sister had made them, and she offered them up as an appetizer, placed on a lettuce leaf with a bit of cheese and gussied up with pumpkin seeds and a fancy-pants pomegranate syrup that she made from reduced juice. At the time I was too busy eating to take a picture, but I recreated something similar later:
Those pickled pumpkins were good. And what’s weird is that I don’t actually like pumpkins under normal circumstances. But these were strange and delicious at the same time: spicy and sweet, and especially great with a little Romano cheese for contrast. She got the recipe from AllRecipes.com. Cute W was a huge fan, too.
We were psyched when my sister gifted us with a jar to take home. Except that I put it into my carry-on because I was afraid of breaking the glass, and it didn’t occur to me that all of those cubes of pumpkin were swimming in just enough vinegar to make a bomb. Or so the TSA feared. I refused to abandon those lovely little autumnal jewels, so the rest of the family sat waiting while I backtracked, drained the jar of pickling liquid, and got back in line. A woman with a little boy was near me in line, and he was clearly curious about the lonely woman who was flying with only a jar full of orange stuff. Now, personally, I’d never heard of eating pickled pumpkins before, but when I explained my predicament to the boy and his mother, she said, “Oh! Pickled pumpkins! I love them. Absolutely worth going through the line again.”
Yep, she was right.
