Pickles and Other Acts of Grace
☕📰 04.05.25 The Saturday Rundown
This week—well, the last three weeks really—was about the illusion of stability, and how that is more dangerous than the risk of reinvention. That’s the bloodline—whether it was buying a walking cane, my daughter’s rent, or your portfolio, this week was about learning to trust your own map. Not Ramsey’s. Nor Orman’s. Not Wall Street’s. Yours.
🥃 The Big Sip:
If you forward this newsletter to someone today, tell them it includes pickles, debt, and volcanoes (you have to hunt for the volcanoes, but they are there). If that doesn’t hook them, they’re not your people.
💭 This Week’s Big Ask:
When did doing “the right thing” stop being enough—and you had to do the truer thing instead? When did you start trusting the life you’re building more than the life you were told to want? When did you first choose presence over penance? These are the questions you sit with, low to the ground, where the truth collects like dust.
Smoke (1995) is a film made of loosely structured vignettes and quiet character studies that orbit around Auggie (Harvey Keitel) and Paul (William Hurt), with stories that spiral outward like a slow-burning cigar—loss, reinvention, memory, lies told for mercy, fathers, daughters, pain, and sometimes, the unexplainable beauty of the mundane.
Everyone in that film is in grief. Everyone is looking for something solid to hold onto.
And instead of punishment or penance, they offer each other presence. Not therapy.
Not salvation. Just: “You hungry?”, “You need a place to sleep?”, “Come work with me for a few days.”
It’s a movie about the sacred act of showing up. About how people—especially damaged people—create found family, in the pause, in the ritual of a photo taken at 8:00 a.m. every morning from the exact same corner.
The Bestest Pickle Recipe (a reader request)
Garlic-Rosemary Pickled Cucumbers, Carrots, & Cauliflower. Makes 2 large quart jars—because one jar ain’t enough for this kind of rapture.
🧂 Brine:
2 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
2 ½ tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar (just a little sweetness to round it out)
🧄 Flavor Bombs (per jar):
4 cloves garlic, smashed (don’t mince, don’t chop — smash like you mean it)
1 fresh rosemary sprig (4–6 inches)
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
½ teaspoon coriander seeds
¼ teaspoon mustard seeds
Pinch of red chili flakes (optional but you’re not weak, are you?)
1 bay leaf
Zest of ½ lemon (just trust me)
🥒 The Stars:
2–3 small Persian cucumbers or 1–2 kirby cukes, cut however you like — spears, coins, sexy diagonals
1 medium carrot, peeled and sliced into thin sticks
½ head cauliflower, broken into small florets
🔥 HOW TO MAKE THESE BITE-ME BABIES:
Prep your jars. Wash them hot and clean like your favorite sins. You’re not canning for the apocalypse, so a good soap and rinse is fine if you’re refrigerating.
Pack the jars. Layer in the cukes, carrots, and cauliflower. Nestle in your garlic, rosemary, spices, lemon zest — make it look like a witch’s potion and smell like a Mediterranean forest.
Heat the brine. In a saucepan, bring the vinegar, water, salt, and sugar to a gentle boil. Stir until everything dissolves. Let it cool slightly — not cold, not hot, just hot-tub temp.
Pour that liquid glory. Fill your jars with the warm brine, making sure everything’s submerged. You can use a spoon to press veggies down if needed.
Seal and cool. Screw on lids and let them sit on the counter for an hour to show off, then move to the fridge.
WAIT. Let those babies marinate at least 48 hours. Ideal is 3–5 days for full sensory symphony. They’ll keep for a month in the fridge (if you have that kind of self-control).
🍸 Bonus Dirty Martini Upgrade:
Splash some of that brine into a gin martini with rosemary or garlic-stuffed olives. It’s a whole mood.
🌶️✨ OPTIONAL UPGRADES: MAKE YOUR PICKLES LEGENDARY
🧪 FERMENTED LACTO-WIZARDRY VERSION
(for the tangy alchemists & gut health rebels)
Skip the vinegar. Let nature do the souring with lactic acid.
Brine:
4 cups water
2.5 tablespoons kosher salt (non-iodized, or it’ll mess with the magic)
Instructions:
Dissolve the salt in water. This is your fermentation brine.
Pack your veggies & aromatics as before.
Pour brine over veggies, leaving 1" headspace.
Weigh veggies down (use a fermentation weight or improvise with a ziploc bag filled with brine).
Cover with a loose lid or fermentation lid.
Let it sit at room temp (65–75°F) for 5–10 days, tasting every day after Day 4.
When it’s right—bright, tangy, zingy—refrigerate to slow the funk.
🧙♂️Vibe: Earthy, complex, alive. These pickles are moody poets and probiotics in a jar.
🔥 FLAVOR TWISTS TO TUNE UP THE DIAL
💖 Pink Peppercorns
Floral, fruity, ever-so-slightly sweet.
Use ½ tsp per jar for a sexy rose-colored note in the background.
🌿 Fresh Dill Heads
Add 1 whole head (or a few fronds) per jar.
Combines with rosemary for a double-herb hit that screams summer garden.
🧅 Shaved Shallots or Red Onion
Add thin slices for color and flavor.
Bonus: they pickle too and become a snack unto themselves.
🌶️ Fresh Jalapeño or Thai Chili
Add a few slices to turn the dial to naughty.
A green jalapeño = fresh sharp heat. A red chili = sweet burn with extra drama.
🍊 Citrus Twist
Swap lemon zest for orange zest or even a sliver of preserved lemon rind for a North African kiss.
🫙 SCALING UP FOR WATER BATH CANNING (SHELF-STABLE BANGER)
Perfect if you're building your apocalyptic pantry or giving out gifts that say “I love you, now pucker up.”
Canning Brine (Makes ~6–7 pints):
6 cups white vinegar (5% acidity)
6 cups water
½ cup kosher salt
2 tablespoons sugar (optional but lovely)
Steps:
Sterilize your jars and lids (boil or run through dishwasher).
Pack hot jars with hot brine and prepped veg/spices.
Leave ½” headspace. Remove air bubbles.
Wipe rims clean. Lid and seal.
Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes (adjust for altitude).
Let cool. Check seal after 12 hrs. Label like the proud witch you are.
🥵Shelf life: 12+ months.
🔥Mood: Open one in February and remember who the f*** you are.
~Thank you, Julie Hitchcock of Navy Federal Credit Union, for an amazing class on the VA Loan process—and for quietly championing the urgent national need for more good pickles.
This past week’s Monday Blueprint was the last in a three-part series titled “The Debt Lie: What They Never Told You About Money.” You can read parts one and two in the links below:
🎧 Pickles & Power Moves | A Playlist by Coffee with Steve
Smoke isn’t a movie about big things. It’s about small things that carry big weight. A photo taken at 8:00 a.m. every day. A kid who steals but gets taken in. A story told in a smoky shop about Christmas and mercy and maybe a lie so beautiful it becomes true. The music here lives in that same quiet ache—the kind of songs that make you sit with your coffee just a little longer. That whisper, “You still with me?”
Tom’s Diner opens the shop: observational, mundane, transcendent. A hymn to routine. Like Auggie’s photo ritual, it doesn’t shout—it records. Fast Car follows, not just a song about escape, but about almosts—almost freedom, almost enough, almost believed. It could be the soundtrack to Paul’s whole life, stuck between grief and maybe. What If God Was One of Us wanders in, not with faith, but with fatigue. It’s asking if salvation ever stops to smoke a cigarette with you on the corner.
Then the soul songs start showing up—slouching, flirting, testifying. Come Pick Me Up, Cucurucu, I Want to Be Evil, Strange Mercy—these tracks don’t resolve. They ask for too much, love too hard, carry bruises like currency. Motion Sickness and No Below are songs for the kid with nowhere to go and the adult still figuring out why they never stayed.
Portishead’s Glory Box is Auggie’s unspoken backstory. Way Down We Go and We Can’t Be Friends are Paul’s. Factory, Heroes are for the kid, for the city, for the broken-hearted believers. They don’t beg for healing. They build lives around the crack in the floorboards.
And then, like a wink at the end of a long story told with cigarette smoke and jazz on the radio—Still Not a Player.
💬 What’s one song that feels like someone handing you a cup of coffee instead of an apology—not because it fixes anything, but because it means they stayed? Hit “Message Steve” and tell me.
Subscribe to the full Coffee with Steve experience here. Or don’t. It’s your inbox—you decide. Pick what you want, skip what you don’t, and keep me around as much (or as little) as you like. I promise, we’ll still be friends.