For all that I don't eat sweets that much, I've almost never met a sweet pickle I didn't like and I'm particularly enamored with the version called bread and butter pickles. The best I ever had were something we'd get one precious jar of a year when I was a kid, it was from Knotts Berry Farm and would come with an assortment of syrups and jams my father would get from a client for Christmas. They were bright yellow from turmeric and had lots of onions swimming among the cucumbers, and were spicier/better than any of the store-bought brands though I certainly didn't turn my nose up at those.
Sweet pickles are to me what candy and chocolate are to others. It's the sweet food I can't resist, the food that's not safe around me, the thing I must occasionally gorge on. They're vegetable crack. Two or three times a year, though Mrs. Knott's pickles have long since left the planet, I break down and buy a jar of a commercial brand. Fannings (or is it Mrs. Fannings) is the better of what's available in my area. I'll finish a pint jar in a day, a half gallon in a week.
So last week when I was at Trader Joe's and saw that they have their own brand of bread and butter pickles I, of course, couldn't help myself. And these are GOOD!!!! Probably the best since the Knotts Berry Farm days. Less sweet than the commercial brands but just sweet enough, very spicy, with some onions in the jar, and quite crunchy. No turmeric, but no yellow dye pretending to the look either. Really, really delicious. I've almost killed the entire jar already and when I go into town today, I'll buy another. Heck, maybe two. Don't want to run out.
Anyway, if there are any other sweet pickle fiends among this crowd, and you've not discovered yet the wonder of the Trader Joe's bread and butter pickle, I can't reccomend these highly enough.
(both colloquialisms for "drunk" here)
Well, if my guests must be subjected to my cooking I hope they will be both blind and pickled by the time the food hits their plates.