"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." — Oscar Wilde
Failure is frequently hailed as a wise mentor. Who hasn’t heard of successful people often boasting about their numerous stumbles before achieving greatness?
However, failure’s lessons can be muted, often overshadowed by the interference of our own egos.
Not today.
A recent failure of mine is on full display. As the NFL coach Mike Tomlin is famous for saying, “You Got to Own it!”
If you traffic in Andy Griffith episodes like I do, you might recall the show featuring Aunt Bea's colossal pickle debacle. This was a failure that was masked by a helpful Andy and Barney choking down the kerosene-soaked cukes to avoid hurting Aunt Bea's feelings.
Where are you going with this one Jeff?
I’ll get there, I promise.
It's important to note that I know my way around fermenting. The few offerings that I consume daily are relegated to muscle memory after 5 years or so.
(If you’re new to this space, perhaps you’d like to revisit the epic Kombucha failure I had some years back.)
Pickles happen to be one of the fermented food staples I can usually make in my sleep.
But because this space was designed to share what I've learned on my gut health journey, I feel especially compelled to share my failures...in public.
I think it paints a much more realistic picture of my journey, that hopefully can help on your journey.
Finally, to the pickles I made a couple weeks ago.
Now, the pickles I make are very simple. Cucumbers are dropped in a 2.5% salt water brine with a dash of pre-made pickle spices and a week later they are fermented gems.
Pretty simple right?
It is as long as you're not distracted by two dogs that are doing their best Dumb and Dumber impression flicking each other's ears and biting ankles in a Texas Death match on the kitchen floor.
(Technology tip- if scroll back up and read this edition in your “browser”, you’ll see the actual cane strike that happened to be an ad-lib by Jeff Daniels. Jim Carrey admitted it was as painful as it looked)
I swear I only turned my head for a second to break up the dust up as I was adding the pre-made spice mixture.
By the way, this is a spice mixture that has pungent ingredients and flavored peppercorns.
So, the damage was done.
A week later, as I salivated thinking about cracking open the cloudy jar, filled with lacto-fermented brine and crisp pickles, I felt like I was in the Mayberry episode all over again.
Only there was no Andy and Barney to save me.
The bitterness of the spice I still haven't figured out, made me wince as I bit into the fermented, but awful-tasting pickle.
Total failure, right?
Well sort of.
Because the cloudy brine is chocked full of good bacteria, and since I’m channeling my inner Mike Tomlin, I needed to own this one and consume every bit of bitterness I made.
This is “purpose eating” in real life.
You see I’ve managed to adopt the mentality that if something is that damn good for me, I’m going to figure out a way to get it in my body. Lacto-fermented brine is one such creature.
I just wish Andy and Barney were still around to help me.
Parting Thought
Before I sign off, I had an interesting thing happen to me the other morning as I set out on walk number one for the day. I walk by this image on my way to my truck every day. I pass it most days on my way to the mailbox. And I ride past it weekly cutting my grass.
But the other morning, I noticed it in all its glory and morning sunlight.
Take a minute today and appreciate something that you might have right in front of you.
And since my wife is a subscriber to this newsletter, I’m off to grab some flowers.
As always, thanks for reading,
Jeff
