The country that pickles (almost) everything

Mother grew up poor. But she never went hungry.

All thanks to grandmother’s creative hunger calculus: a ball of jaggery was split between four children in lieu of candy; oil, used to deep-fry fritters at the start of the month was filtered and used in curries for the rest of the month; and curries were engineered to expand in output volume even if the inputs remained the same; nothing was wasted and no one went hungry.

And if all herjugaadhacks failed, the family could always call upon the most magical of foods — pickles — to…