Saturday, June 20, 2009

In a Pickle


So here is my dilemma.....I have pickles to sell. Wonderful pickles that are crisp and not too sweet and not too sour. Little children and dogs love them....well, maybe not dogs.....and plenty of grown ups ask me when the pickles will be ready. I have one neighbor who tells me all the time that I need to sell them. He insists that I could be on Donny Deutsch's show "The Big Idea" and I want to believe him! But, after much research I have liability worries on my mind. Of course I discover all this liability information after I enthusiastically ordered 250 plastic containers to try and save money over the glass canning jars that I usually use.

I have a farmer's market available to me and was primed to start pickle production for the Saturday morning markets this summer but that all came to a screeching halt when I saw the nasty word "Listeria" in one of the online articles I was researching. You see, my pickles are not cooked.....that is what makes them so crisp and delicious. And since I can't control how the farmers grow the cucumbers that I buy at the big farmer's market....I would be taking a risk.
Grow your own cucumbers you might say. I do. But my little suburban garden can only grow so many and I need cucumbers all summer long. I have to supplement with crops from the larger Farmer's Market. It is sad really. But the reality is that lawsuits are real and the amount of money I would make selling my pickles would not make it worth the aggravation. I am too much of a realist. And I don't have the blind pickle ambition it would take. So, I will just continue making my pickles for family and friends and that is good enough for now.

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