I love pickled eggs.

When I was growing up this was a common addition to picnics and parties.

Pickled eggs were part of preservation method for vegetables like pickled beets and carrots and cucumbers way back before refrigeration.    The spiciness of vinegar and the tartness of a little bit of salt was just a treat to the bland diet of the time.   A hundred years of dining tradition to get beyond the boredom of overcooked beef and pork with potatoes.

You look at the array of meal selections we have today with Indian and Chinese and Moroccan, they all come with spices, some of them hot.   But in the history of North America, aside from salt and black pepper, we only adopted these exotic spices in the sixties.  In the case of Pat and I, this was a discovery in the early seventies when we moved to Toronto and realized there were flavour buds on the side of our tongues that we had never experienced.

Pickled eggs went back into the attic of our dining options.

But occasionally I would see a pickled egg at a breakfast buffet and remember how nice they tasted.  Pat would frown and look at me with the look that this egg will give me a heart attack.

I remember the scene from Dancing With Wolves when the actor Robert Pastorelli was eating pickled eggs from a jar when he delivered Costner to the fort.  As he was was taking the mule train back east he was eating pickled eggs when the natives shot arrows into him.  Not a great way to die, but as if he had to die, he would have loved to had the taste of these tart and spicy protein treats in his mouth.

Pat and I were shopping at Costco today and they had a sale price for a big jar of Pickled Eggs.  I wanted to buy them because it would take me back to my youth.

But, of course, Pat is right and I should only look for fibre treats at this stage of my life.  Maybe hemp, or grass or soy roots.  Definitely nothing with flavour.

However if any of my kids are reading this, a jar of pickled eggs slipped into my room as I am waiting to die, would be appreciated.