Try this at home, but be careful (this means you Lily); green tomato pickle and tartar sauce

Pickles. Love em or hate em. Seems to be no intermediate, huh? Well, Annalena loves them. Probably part of her sour disposition. I'm not one for "sweet and sour" pickles. For me, the more sour they are, the better. What the hell is this hell called half sours anyway? I wanna know that the enamel on my teeth is melting as I bite into em. And if my gut rebels, well, it wouldn't be the first time.
But pickles are hard. Well, no, they're not, but making a small batch is. If you're going to go through the trouble of getting things together to make them, might as well make a big batch. IF you are going to store them. In my opinion, the fact that they are pickles, does not mean you have to store them (of course, this does not explain the 12 jars of pickled cucumbers from last year, but that's another story).
Ok, so where is this digression taking us? To a recipe for pickled green tomatoes that is really, REALLY good, and really easy. There are some warnings, and because Annalena loves you all so much, she's going to tell you where you can change the recipe, and probably still get good results.
This uses green tomatoes. Anyone who has grown these knows what I'm talking about. Green tomatoes have a flavor that is sort of in between a ripe tomato and an apple. Late in the year, when the tomatoes are on the vine but there's not enough warm weather to let them ripen, you take them off the vine, and use them any way you can. Farmers have caught on, and as long as cooks can fry them, (the movie "fried green tomatoes" did NOT appear out of the vapor), farmers will take them off the vine so you can use them for different things. This is one of them.

To make the pickles, you will need 12 ounces (3/4 pound) of green tomatoes. Now, here's a place where the lack of certainty in recipes comes out. My recipe said "3 small green tomatoes (12 ounces)". I happen to have a scale, and I weighed mine. 2 green tomatoes were 12 ounces, and that's what I used. If I had not had the scale and used three, would this have worked? Yes, but it would have been different. Don't worry so much. Also, a medium white onion. No size was given here, so I grabbed what I thought was a medium sized white onion. You also need a cup of water and, according to the recipe, a cup of white wine vinegar. Well, I have champagne vinegar, and cider vinegar. I do not have white wine vinegar. I do not like it. I use it for cleaning scale off of the coffe pot, and that's about it. SO I used cider vinegar. Remember the apple note on green tomatoes? Well... Also, 3 smashed garlic cloves, who cares what size, a teaspoon of peppercorns, and 2 teaspoons of salt. Also a teaspoon of sugar.

Here's where we get to another point where, sorry Lily, you gotta bail out or use a different means. You need a mandoline, or a benriner (and if you don't know what they are, go to the instructions for Lily), and put the tomatoes and the onion through them, getting the slices incredibly thin. If you do not have such a device (and they are dangerous, right 'Lil?), use a sharp knife and cut them as thin as you can. There is actually a very cheap tool you can buy, called a "tomato knife," and Lily, you are hereby instructed to get one of those to make this. Just cut things as thin as possible, and then layer them, in a big measuring cup that holds at least a quart. Bring the other ingredients together in a pot, and bring them to a simmer. Then pour this over the tomato onion mixture, let it sit at room temperature for an hour, then refrigerate it.

Guess what? YOU GOT PICKLES. And they are good. If you happen to have left over sliced beets, you can add them too, and get a beautifully pink or golden product.

So, what do you do with these? Well, you can put them on hamburgers, or hot dogs, for example, OR... you can do this wonderful thing. This is so good, ragazzi, that it makes a great topping for crackers. (How did I know that?). Take about a cup of those pickles, and drain off the liquid. Use the liquid in place of vinegar in a salad dressing. Chop the veggies, and mix them with a quarter cup of buttermilk, and a cup of mayonnaise. Don't bother with homemade here. Hellman's is fine. And just refrigerate that to let it blend.

This is really superb on a piece of fried fish, like striped bass coated in cornmeal (see where we're going next?), but like I say, you can put this on a cracker and have a great snack. OR, you can thin it with olive oil and make salad dressing. OR... well, you just figure out what you can do with something creamy and tart. Sort of like Lily.

I LOVE YOU LITTLE LIL. Take care of your fingers, but make this.