August 6, 2009
It's funny how things come full circle in life, and it is always serendipitous and surprising when it happens.
Such as an old friend Marilyn and her lost recipe for lime pickles that showed up for me just in the nick of time.
I guess that is why I named this column Full Circle in the first place because I find it fascinating and incredibly entertaining when such things happen, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.
As an aside and this is a good time to mention this, my Full Circle column just completed four years of weekly publication in The Examiner and online. Thank you dear readers both on and offline for your emails and conversations along the way. It is my joy and privilege.
But now, here's the back-story of how this lost lime pickle recipe took a rather circuitous path and came full circle through Facebook and a radio talk show to my recipe file.
Marilyn entrusted me with her secret recipe sometime in the summer of 1981 if I remember correctly. Shortly thereafter, I promptly copied and shared it with friends, made canned pickles to give as Christmas gifts offered in pint jars with ribbons and a copy of the recipe attached, and I even included the recipe in my Christmas letter. I don't think Marilyn minded much.
Yet, somehow, despite its extensive distribution, I lost it.
After twenty-eight years, this highly coveted, envied and long since forgotten recipe showed up just in time for August canning.
More importantly, it came round just in time to be added to a cherished collection of family recipes as a gift for my son's upcoming wedding. The acute problem for me was that I lost it years ago, and I could not find it anywhere with the wedding fast approaching.
Now August arrives when the cucumbers are profuse and begging to be canned and the aforementioned wedding is mere weeks away and only Marilyn's recipe will do.
Enter Facebook and a radio station.
Over the weekend, I noticed on Facebook that niece-in-law Elizabeth wrote on my wall that her mother Karen listened to a radio talk show program in which my old friend Marilyn was the honored guest. The program was a spot titled "Keeping Good Company" and featured an interesting, accomplished community resident (Marilyn) who has contributed much to the area throughout a lifetime.
The station in question is KWRT 1370 AM in Boonville, Missouri, and turns out that one of the DJs is Sharon, a fellow Mizzou Journalism School alum.
Sharon interviewed Marilyn who talked about the fun we had in the 80s when she was an advertising salesman on my old newspaper/shopper, The Penny Post, in Boonville. Marilyn also discussed some of her favorite recipes, however she did not mention her famous lime pickles. In true Marilyn style, she brought along her also-famous Jalapeno Pie concoction for the DJs to taste. For the record, all of Marilyn's recipes are "famous" or should be.
Are you following this OK so far?
Elizabeth posted the story on Facebook about how Sharon interviewed Marilyn on the radio and they both reminisced about my weekly newspaper and about recipes. I then searched and found Sharon on Facebook so she could fill in the gaps in the story.
It was then, and only then, the thought occurred to me that if I looked in the basement in one of my storied boxes of life memorabilia that reside in the bowels of this edifice that I might find copies my old Penny Post newspaper. I knew they were there somewhere. Sure enough, there was the lime pickle recipe printed in a food section in August of 1981.
But it took a radio interview and a Facebook post to jog my memory enough to help me look in the right box in the basement.
And that's why I like things coming full circle, which they almost always do. You never know what's coming next. Our only challenge is to wait for them.
(Postscript: Do you have something that came full circle for you, too? A lost ring? An old love. A pet that disappeared for years. Let me know; I'd enjoy hearing about it.)
