The Last Pickled Egg

One of the delights of holidays is that they often feature special foods that are eaten only at certain times of the year. In my own family, one of the treats reserved for summer picnics and holiday meals is the famous Pennsylvania Dutch treat, the pickled egg.

Pickled eggs are made by hard-boiling eggs and then soaking them for several days (or longer) in a mixture of red beets, vinegar, sugar, and other seasonings. The result, if you have done it right, is a perfect pickled egg which is pink nearly all the way to the center, with just a bit of gold in the middle.

This is a pickled egg made by my mother, age 84. I snagged it (or perhaps more aptly, liberated it, as the cool people used to say in the 60s), along with a few pieces of her fudge, when we left my parents' house on Christmas evening. My mother has always made the best pickled eggs, not really sure why, but they are just better.

These days, she may use store-bought canned beets. But in the old days, my parents grew the red beets in their own garden, and canned them. My mother was sometimes forced to defend her beets from white-tailed deer who liked to nibble on them: "Look! They're drooling on my beets!" she'd say, running out into the yard and flapping her apron to scare off the deer. (Gee, maybe upon reflection, I DO know what the secret ingredient was!)

At some point in the holidays, it comes down to this: the final one of whatever treat you've squirrelled away. And so it was that upon this evening, I ate the last one of my mother's pickled eggs. I like mine sliced in half, and lightly salted and peppered. And this one was delicious, just like all the ones before it!

The song to accompany this photo of the very last pickled egg has to be about the last of something. And so I've picked a tune from The Band's The Last Waltz. You can pick out Bob Dylan, Ronnie Wood, and Ringo Starr in the video. The song is I Shall Be Released.