Watch Out for Olives!

Due to medical appointments near and far, I spend a fair amount of time in the car. When I'm not listening to an audiobook, NPR is my travel companion. I recently heard Fresh Air's Terry Gross interview culinary historians Jane Ziegelman and Andy Coe. Their book, A Square Meal, looks at the impact of The Depression on American food since "The Great Depression was a time when Americans had food front and foremost in their minds because they were worrying about it every day."

I was fascinated, listening to them discuss the high priorities of cost, nutrition, and how filling food was, even at the expense of taste, and how school lunches became so important. Some of the recipes Ziegelman and Coe recounted sounded dreadful, but the authors also talked about some food ideas that made me laugh out loud. 

"Spicy foods were considered stimulants. They were classified as stimulants, so they were on that same continuum along with caffeine and alcohol all the way up to cocaine and heroin. And if you started with an olive, you might find yourself one day addicted to opiates. It put you on a very slippery slope -- watch out for olives!"

I love the salty deliciousness of olives, and coincidentally my plans for that afternoon included the next step in this dangerous spicy addiction continuum -- pickles. I cautiously gathered my garden cucumbers and stimulant ingredients, vinegar, salt, garlic, dill, and set about preparing several quarts of pickles.

After the gateway drug of pickles, what could be next? Salsa, of course!

Pickles and salsa may be dangerous points along the slippery slope of those spicy addictive stimulants, but I do like to live on the deliciously wild side.