Who are you? (woo-hoo woo-hoo)

I thought it was time to put a little post about how I came up with my blog name. It is quite simple really. I love gherkins! I have loved pickled things all my life - my mum tells the story of how I once ate half a jar of pickled onions while she pushed me in a trolley around Tesco when I was about 1. Give me anything pickled and I am happy - onions, cabbage, chillies, eggs, cucumber, mussels, ginger, herring, whatever. Give me a jar of anything in vinegar and I am happy. Except for walnuts, but I am working on them!

Anyway I have a thing about gherkins and can eat a jar whilst watching TV or working, like others might eat their way though a packet of crisps. I love how you can get tiny sharp little French cornichons and big soft sweet American dill pickles and everything else in between. Mum made some home-made ones once and they rocked and took the roof off my mouth. I found an amazing jar of firm, chewy, salty ones in my in-laws' house about 10 years ago and have never found the same type since. Every year my best mate buys me a jar of them for Christmas and they never make it to Boxing Day.

OK so I like my gherkins and many people really dislike them - why on earth would anyone take one out of a burger? Why? They make the burger! Whilst I was pregnant with my first I would snack on gherkins in work and it really brought the lovers and the haters out of the woodwork. I'd get the lovers sidling up to me to confess their guilty gherkin passion, and then the haters would be bemoaning the foul stench and questioning my hormonal balancing, not knowing it was not just a pregnancy thing!

So gherkins are a dirty little passion for me so I chose the gherkin as my little symbol and as this blog is about my little life in my family in our house, where do gherkins live? In The Gherkin Jar of course! So I am Gherkin (aka Jen), I am married to Mr Gherkin (aka Jon) and we have 2 beautiful little gherkins, Cornichon (aka Dylan) is nearly 4 and Little Pickle (aka Rhys) is nearly 2. More on the contents of The Gherkin Jar on a later post.

So there are my reasons for being a Gherkin. Why do you call yourself what you call yourself?