Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I'm writing a paper for grad school on the impact that changing farming methods post-WWII had on small-scale farmers in a specific community in the Midwest, with a section on how changing food production methods changed rural diets and culinary traditions.

The author may not be referring to a specific pickle recipe, but in the article she writes about how she wants to collect all the favorite recipes of her community, and she specifically mention's Mary's dill pickles, Susan's sweet pickles, and Helen's secret sister pickles, with the secret sister being her personal favorite. So I think it is a real recipe, but I suppose it could have been Helen's personal recipe that she made up and thus isn't widely known.

Come on a-my house (Rosemary Clooney)
Party on the Mountain (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)

I really have a thing for sausage, any kind, so being in Berlin and eating a real German bratwurst with spicy mustard is just about the best thing that ever happened to me in terms of pork products. The brat was about a foot long and 1/4 inch around and was served in a crusty roll about the size of a hamburger bun. So hard to eat, but oh so good.

Of course, that was the same trip that I walked into a charcuterie in Belgium and was so depressed that I couldn't buy any sausages because I had no way to keep them fresh or cook them. So many beautiful pieces of meat, too!

I have a Canon A630, which I use for food photography (and on vacations, etc.). It does really well. I usually use the "indoor" setting and no flash, and my pictures almost always turn out well. I also have a little tabletop tripod that I got free with the camera. I don't know what brand it is or anything, but it works well. The only thing I have against the A630 is that if you don't know a lot about cameras and you decide to use the Automatic setting, you will get bad pictures. Or at least the automatic never worked for me.