Since Canine Sherman graced this post with a new photo:

I thought I’d talk about the color purple, and how it looks so good here with a merle coat, but how i’ve always hated the color. Purple, the non-color, the yicko, the bleh. And no, this isn’t a post about me growing older and having a soft spot for that hue, as in that silly “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple” poem, the line of poetry which sums up my life is and will always be:
“I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

And so, since purple is not very interesting to talk about, other than it definitely makes you look fat (not red, not blue, just large) and that it’s proof I inherited two recessive genes, as I can’t metabolize the bright betacyanin pigment from eating beets so my pee comes out the color of the ribbons awarded for agility titles…

…let’s talk about the other “P” word: pickles!

About a week ago a friend of mine told me about her recent stay in the hospital where a lot of the workers were immigrants with just the worst stories about getting ditched by their husbands, defrauded by their own people, reamed by their own kids. My friend learned from one Russian woman that if you hollow out a radish and fill it with honey and leave it overnight on a radiator, it was a cure for something, she (my friend) just couldn’t remember what. Turns out some people say tuberculosis, and the Internet says “whatever ails you.”

Having wondered all this time how the hell you hollow out a little radish I found huge black radishes at the farmer’s market this morning! A big throng of women were jostling for them, and in my imagination I heard them discussing all-things-radi in Russian and Armenian, but when I got closer it was just the tone of their westside-liberal voices ordering the guy to take the tops off that sounded foreign.

But I believe pickles have the same curative power, and yes, even the PURPLE ones that I can eat by the boatload from Zankou Chicken, so that will be my next project. In the meantime in less than 24 hours we’ll have tarragon/green garlic and chili-peppercorn pickles.

And this, my dear fellow rockstars, is PINK.