132. What a Pickle

10th May 2014, Shoreditch, London

Sometimes my soul gets possessed by Martha Stewart and some serious domestic madness occurs in my kitchen.

I am the first to admit that I frequently have Cheerios and Champagne for dinner, but I can actually both cook and bake believe it or not, even if me doing either is rare. So me trying to be a housewife from the 50's may not happen frequently, but when I do, I go all in.

This Saturday was one of those domestic devil days where the urge had come over me to get beetroot pickling. As you do normally on a Saturday afternoon.

It did generate some rather questioning looks from the Flatmate when the moose apron came on and the big pot came out from its' hiding place far, far back in the kitchen cupboard.

Out also came the trusted checked red and white cookbook that has been a trusted staple in Swedish households since 1980 that can guide you to cook just about anything that can be considered semi basic. Like time required to roast a moose shank, how to make lingonberry jam and a guide to all the different sorts of crispy rye bread, with local recipes county by county. In other words, the essentials.

So as it turns out, pickling beetroots is very time consuming. And kind of dull. Which I should have known, I'm no pickle virgin after all.

Firstly, the beets takes a very long 75 minutes to cook before you even put it on the pickle juice stuff. And secondly, the pickle juice stuff really smells awful. I think the acid fumes may even have killed a few birds flying by outside.

When it was finally all finished, they tasted just like I'd imagine pickled beetroots would have tasted like if either of my grandmother would have been the type to pickle beetroots on the spare time they never really had the luxury of having.

I am now officially out of things to pickle.

Both the red and the golden beets.

And another 3 jars sitting in the fridge - I will be having beets for the rest of the year.