This is a village sound cast network original production. Welcome to the food podcast side dishes a village sound cast network miniseries where we celebrate and explore the flavor of home. I'm Lindsay Cameron Wilson. Dear Lindsey, I've Loved thinking about flavors of home. Even if I couldn't decide what they were or what exactly home even means I think of food and family of my grandmother and my parents and my three brothers with whom I shared those influential people in meals years of meals then I think of my husband and our current home and our Venn. Gram of overlaps in differences his tidy cooking my chaos his love of quantity and density my preference for sparse and light and personally I keep coming back to the word the flavor the descriptor of sour but then I always remember some notes with the sweet and the salty and the bitter too. The Venn diagram of my friendship with Jasmine is a series of circles. Where my younger sister Lee my Aunt Sandra my friend Andrea Jasmine and I overlap Lee went to high school with Jasmine. She was one of Lee's very smart friends the smartest maybe but not scary smart likable smart the kind of person who would laugh as her mass of black curls bounced her face environment. Being a twin with warmth and curiosity Jasmine grew up with her Israeli parents and her three brothers and a tall narrow Home full of talent in music with a strong Yiddish flavor permeating everything Lisa's Jasmine would arrive to class and a happy Fury rummage through her backpack and eventually pull out a crumpled piece of paper which turned out to be the most poetic piece of writing the class had ever heard. Andrea is Jasmine's friend and fellow filmmaker Andrea film Jasmine short glamour guts and instructional film on how to live glamorously with intestinal disease. They've been friends ever since my Aunt Sandra met Jasmine through Andrea, or maybe it was through me Orly were not sure this is how it goes with good friends. All five of us get together for dinner when Jasmine is in town. It's women only always a potluck we talk about our lives our work and we tell stories that make us laugh. Jasmine's famous laughter still moves throughout her body. Her hair is shorter now, but still long enough to bounce Andrea throws her head back Sandra sometimes slaps. The table and leaves laughter is totally visual. It's an inhale completely inaudible. Put a joy to behold we come together around the table overlapping with our love of flavor friendship nourishment and curiosity. Last summer a new friend Graham came over for some pickle soup, you know the one it was very satisfying for me. At least. I don't even know if he was hungry. It was 4:00 in the afternoon, but he was in town only briefly to play a show and had a short window to hang out and I needed to feed him that pickle soup because before it ever met him Graham was on tour with one of my brother's Danny who had written to me. Hey only if super easy, do you happen to have Photo for the pickle soup recipe accordion player does lot of pickling. I sent him my messy notation thought yours might be superior. Yes, I had the recipe it was actually a cumulative recipe from my grandmother first the pickles and then from those optionally the pickle soup my brothers and I always loved both the pickles made without vinegar just salt fresh dill garlic pickling spice. No precise measurements. Every time I asked my grandma she'd say in Polish. No, just me and khakha, yang. Ye of him. I don't know and it was funny. But we also both knew why I was Get down I got my approximations and the recipe ends with I leave the jars on a warm balcony for several days. If all went perfectly the pickles would become carbonated biting into a carbonated vegetable is a fabulous life experience. And if the pickles don't get fizzy, well the perfect thing to do with them is make pickle soup. My grandma she was a holocaust Survivor. She was starving for years. She had to learn to cook in a hurry with very limited ingredients when she was working as a housekeeper for an Austrian Nazi family that had no idea. She was Jewish. During the second World War I think like all survivors her relationship to food was permanently altered for some it goes in the direction of the overflowing fridge over-serving overeating for others like her. It was the no more than what you need. No waste approach. My mom just wrote a book that includes my grandma's Holocaust Survival Story. I read the manuscript and was struck by the recurrence of food in its absence the Daydreams my grandma and her sister had about giving each other thick slices of bread with butter the precious carrot that was grabbed out of my grandma's hand on the street by a hungry acquaintance. I also realized that although for entirely different and incomparable reasons. She and I both spent many years hungry in my case. It's because I have Crohn's and intestinal disease and the only way I have some control over my symptoms is to not eat. I've also needed to fast a few times for weeks for medical tests. Surgeries and treatments this has for sure had an effect on my relationship to food. I wanted to taste good. I want to be hungry for it. If I'm going to pay a digestive cost. I'm okay with that, but I want it to be worth it. Kosher dill pickles are made by covering cucumbers with salt garlic pickling spices and fresh dill and leaving them to ferment in a warmish spot. The salt keeps bacteria from growing as carbohydrates are transformed into carbon dioxide while the acid created through the fermentation process keeps the cucumber's tough and crunchy acid plus fermentation equals flavorful crunchy pickles. It's a Will tail of capturing something in its prime putting it through duress only for it to come out better than it was before. This beautiful crunchy salty bubbly thing a humble green cucumber that persevered until it became a pickle is an ingredient woven into Jasmine's flavor history. But my pickle history is different. It's not a story of survival. It's more sweet and silliness. I'm in a pickle scratch and sniff the dill pickle sticker the classic pregnant woman's craving a big pickle in Nellie from Little House in the Prairies case a kosher dill pickle eaten with vanilla ice cream, sour and sweet crunchy and soft or that game. We played with hands when we were little fat fuck up high. pickles Army, green and oblong floating in a murky liquid seeds bobbing around. My sister Lee was the family outlier. She love dill pickles dill pickles were considered an acquired taste like olives chicken liver or fish eyeballs food that most don't like because they haven't been exposed to it, but my grow to love it eventually. Where is the Urban Dictionary says this stuff is shit, but you'll get used to it because here in the maritimes we've been exposed to something different something more familiar something sweeter. Like the tiny pickled gherkins. My grandmother served in a small cut glass bowl with our lunch on Sundays. I loved how delicate they were. So little sour and sweet or how about chouchou our bread and butter the condiment pickles that have been made for Generations around here. They are chopped pickles and spooned alongside a boring dinner to add Crunch and tangy sweetness and it's cucumber season right now. So people are making dill pickles, but like chow chow and bread-and-butter the recipe calls for salt herbs pickling spices along with vinegar and sugar. Jasmine's pickles are fermented with just salt in contrast to that vinegar and sugar Aid in fermentation in a safe controlled way. There's no maybe it won't work or is this room warmish enough but salt alone allows for good bacteria to grow this is called lacto-fermentation. The sweet Maritime way is a form of pickle. Yes, but our pickles are not alive. This makes me wonder why all the sugar the sweetness are we afraid of homemade carbonation are we afraid of adversity are we afraid of sour and most of all would Jasmine say are sweet pickles are worth it. Almost 15 years ago. I had my second of many intestinal surgeries. I've been living and working in Ottawa, but I came back home to Halifax for the operation a few weeks after I got out of the hospital. I met a man named Ezra we had a magical and engulfing love story. I moved back to Nova Scotia to be with him though. I decided not to move into his house right away. I wanted that part to feel ripe rather than convenient. Plus he lived in the Tiny Town of Lunenburg. And I wanted to maintain a connection to the city to he had a good friend Dougie who lived in a big house that had a flat that I could rent. I took it and Doug became not only my neighbor but a special person in my life as well Dougie and Ezra knew each other from nass cat that our College where Ezra had studied Ceramics and Dougie was the technician and the department. He was much more than a technician though. He made beautiful work bowls and platters he knew how to cook and host and serve artfully. His doors were always open to me to Ezra and to my friends who became our friends. We had beautiful hilarious dinners. It was such a sweet era. My surgery was not successful, but I was so happy. I didn't care. I felt lucky. I remember wishing that as your could have met my grandmother and that she could have met him. I knew they would have loved each other as much as I loved each of them. When I told Ezra I had her pickle recipe he was all in and we pickle together my first time since she had died. Time passed the pickles soured and our relationship just got sweeter when bitterly cold sunny day as her and I were in a car accident. He died. I'd never experienced such heartbreak. I was grief wrecked after I got home from the hospital. It was such a dark and blurry time. I'd sit on my back steps and cry every day Dougie who couldn't bear the sadness would poke his head over the fence and say all the wrong things. But he did know how to do the right things. He taught me how to garden. I wanted to grow food and even though he was a flower snob he built raised beds for me and a mini Eiffel Tower for the Press cucumbers and edible nasturtiums to climb up. I grew tomatoes and herbs and broccoli and bit by bit these signs of sustenance and life fed. Me and Doug fed me. He kept hosting dinners and had come through a passage in our shared basement popping out in his dining room. I don't remember when I first noticed but I started to feel at a certain point like he was bringing a parade of men through hoping I think that any one of them might be a match for Me 3 years later. I popped in to Doug's kitchen and Matt was there he had first been a ceramic student at the art college and now he was back to teach a few classes for a year Dougie hosted a big dinner at his long skinny table that night. He served a whole fish and one of my girlfriend's ate the eye. ball to try and catch a guy's attention the guy barely registered the sacrificial eyeball ingestion, but mad and I laughed and laughed at the failed attempt and then a second dinner pasta making this time with just me Matt and Doug kind of a chaperone date by accident and finally just me and Matt we cooked at my place and it was exciting and uncomplicated he moved in quickly and we became a unit quickly and so when he got a full-time, Ceramic teaching job offer in Baltimore. We decided to get married under a chuppah and Dougie's Garden in my garden next door. We had snacks on the tables surrounded by climbing cucumbers and all my dear family friends and vegetables. And ever and dance the hora in a giant Circle through the open Gates of the two backyards as my brothers played klezmer music. Then we move the party to the our College to the Ceramics Department wherever 1/8 one of Matt's in my Venn diagram overlaps Falafel and shawarmas with mandatory pickled turnips and Dougie gave one of those speeches the kind that's painful in the moment, but later contributes to the joy of the memory. Was essentially a 15-minute sales pitch for the mustard. He makes I remember the line you've got the two ingredients the mustard seeds and the vinegar. I was sure I was the vinegar but he never even drew the metaphor. I visited Jasmine's Garden earlier this summer. We walked around the raised beds and stepped on the arugula growing wild in between Jasmine said Dougie smuggled the arugula seeds from Italy and now arugula has taken over the garden. She bent over and pick some for me. The leaves were warm from the Sun and so peppery almost hot. She pointed out her favorite Dogwood near a wooden structure for climbing Peas the Leaning Tower of Pisa Matt calls it we moved under the arbor covered in grapes. And then to the back of the garden where espaliered pear trees stretch across the fence. I imagine their blossoms in the spring a wall of Eight. This is not a selfish Garden. This is a come in and see Garden Walk play Dance sit down and eat join in life will grow bloom wither and die here, but then it'll grow back again next year. Jasmine bent over and picked some dill to garnish the pickle soup. She had made for us for lunch. There were forget-me-nots growing up through the dill. Tiny blue flowers Tangled throw those floaty Franz that says something Jasmine said I trolled the deal between my fingers. It had gone to seed a chartreuse Queen. Anne's Lace of sorts ready to flavor a batch of pickles a forget-me-not Blossom clung to the dill blue one. yellow a flavor and a reminder and so the time came for Matt and I to leave Nova Scotia and another era ended. I rented my place at which I had bought from dougie dougie had bought Ezra's old house and moved to Lunenburg. There was still the matter of the pickles I've made with Ezra now a literal preservation, but I couldn't bring them with me. So I distributed those pickles to the safe refrigerators of my brothers and my parents and it went without saying please don't touch those pickles not It and mad and I built a new life in a new city. It was so hard to start over but very gradually I forged a place for myself and a whole new set of important relationships. I knew we'd created a real home when I was ready to throw not just any party but a Jewish holiday party for our new Baltimore world. This was the invite. Dear friends this Saturday is one of the eight available Hanukkah nights. So if you're free come over mad, and I will make the Jewish easiest snacks that I can think of the common ingredient being the worried that it won't ever be enough most specifically. I want to promise you'll Atticus though having so far in life managed to get away with eating other people's potato pancakes. Oh ppp's and as I make this delayed transition to adulthood, I'm preemptively Nervous about my lack of performance like anything Jewish. There are thousands of opinions on how and why and why not and they all conflict depending on which experts advice I choose to follow and they're all experts the result could be wispy crispy and golden or cold soggy and bitter. So to give you the full cultural experience. Please join me in assuming the worst, then we can together either be pleasantly surprised. Or hopeful that bitter latkes should be the least of our troubles. I realized this is short notice and I already know a couple of you will be away. But given that this is a holiday of Miracles and a culture of guilt. I still hope to see each of you. And is that so wrong Jasmine Jasmine is famous for her emails. I have one saved from last year. It was a group email inviting friends to a party. Her garden, she was home from Baltimore but it kept her flat in Halifax in her garden was in full September Bloom. Could we all please come over tomorrow? The email included a link to Elvis's you were always on my mind which we had to listen to while reading the invite. I couldn't make it to her house last year, but I was there for the pickle soup that hot afternoon in July Lee and Sandra were away. But Andrea was free and Matt to I brought Buffalo yoghurt to spoon on top of the pickle soup. Jasmine usually serves it with a dollop of sour cream, but she thought the Tangy yogurt made from a herd of buffalo that graze near the ocean on the South Shore of Nova Scotia would do the trick. It was a hot day for Sue but it didn't seem to matter. The soup was pure nourishment perfectly chopped cubes of what were once cucumbers then fermented into pickles then softened into a soup and with them came all the flavors that dill pickles bring salt garlic mustard seed and Dill lots of Dill. It was pungent in the best way made smooth and creamy from the yogurt then she survived. Vibrant salads from Auto Link. He's cookbook Jerusalem roasted carrots and the peppery arugula from her garden and vibrant greens talk with nasturtiums. The soup was a nod to polish practicality, but the solids they were all Israeli Sunshine where her father's family have lived for Generations. We ate coconut cream pie for dessert from the bakery on the corner. The bakery is a Halifax institution, but was closing soon. The family was retiring so I bought a pie I had to soon Matt and Jasmine would be moving to Montreal but they bring pickles with them and make pickle soup and their new kitchen and we'd be here when they visited to share the sweet-and-sour together and we'd laugh and slap the table and inhale all that is nourishing curious and flavorful and sometimes sweet Lindsay. This got complicated but you know that too I think is one of my flavors of home with love Jasmine. So what's the flavor of your home? We'd love to hear. I'm on Twitter at the food podcast, or we can chat on Instagram at Lindsay Cameron Wilson or at the food podcast. Thank you Jasmine for the beautiful letter and thanks to your brother saggy for for the beautiful music. You can find all the pickle recipes and links to Jasmine's films in our Notes. Thanks for listening. I'm Lindsay Cameron Wilson. This was a village sound cast network original production. This was a village sound cast network original production.
Welcome to Part Three of Side Dishes, The Food Podcast mini series exploring the Flavours of Home. Jasmine Oore is a filmmaker, she is a writer, she’s a visionary, she’s a friend. She’s also an Israeli/Polish/ Canadian pickle soup maker. In this episode, Jasmine explores the flavours of her home, a home filled with mustard seeds and dill, crunchy pickles, nasturtiums and arugula. It’s a place where eastern European heartiness merges with sunshine and spice, where grief and salty tears are swirled with sweetness and music. It’s where hunger has lived, alongside illness, dinner parties and laughter. Jasmine’s home moves from Halifax to Baltimore to Montréal and back again. Halifax is the constant. It’s where her family settled, it’s where she has her garden, it’s where she kept her pickles, it’s where she met her husband Matt. Salty, garlicky, fermented and sour are her common flavours in every home. They’re flavours that are new to me - a carbonated crunch, full of history and strife. But in a soup, these pickles mellow into something gentler, something we all can share. “Lindsay, this got complicated,” writes Jasmine at the end of her letter, “but you know, that too is one of my flavours of home.” ----- Mentioned in this episode: Jasmine Oore Films - There’s Been a Terrible Mistake Glamour Guts  After the Fall Elvis’ Always on My Mind Julie Andrew’s performing a Jewish Wedding Song For Jasmine’s pickle soup recipe, visit here. 