Pickles count as vegetables, right?

Never in a million years - prior to my first child's birth - would I have considered giving dill pickles to a baby. Then I had one of those fascinating/horrifying encounters. You know the ones of parenting behavior different from your own? The tiny infant drinking the bottle filled with juice. The baby eating Ruffles and drinking Diet Coke from her mother's can. The kid out in freezing weather with no socks on. The newborn out in sweltering weather bundled up so thickly you wonder if he's smothered. The boy who kicks, pushes, and bites while mom looks on indulgently. The siblings who run screaming though the store pulling things off shelves.

Well, I was at a local livestock sale - which double as family entertainment for some of the rural crowd -and saw a mother offer her 6-7 month old baby one of those tart whole dill pickles. The poor thing grimaced and gagged and the family seemed to find it amusing.

Cut to my son, aged approximately 2 (abt 2 1/2 years later), begging for a bit of dill chip that I was putting on my hamburger. Finally, after much whining on his part, I conceded. To my shock he wolfed it down and begged for another. Holy cow. Babies eat pickles?

Wait a minute. I have no doubt that Latina women give their babies spicy foods to taste and Indian moms give their toddlers curry. It's just their normal food. That's how one develops a taste for this stuff. Why not pickles? Heck, I LOVE dill pickles.

So now my two toddlers are addicted to pickles.

And they're veggies ... aren't they? Packed full of nutrients! (Vinegar's a nutrient, isn't it?)

And while we're on the subject of pickles, let me share how odd my darling hubby can be.

I was loading dill chips on a hamburger (toldya I love 'em) and was commenting on how weird it was that pickles never seemed to go bad. Strange-but-adorable hubby says: "That's 'cause they're ZOMBIES!"

I goggled at him, "What?!"

"They're zombies. They were vegetables, then died and got embalmed and now they live forever. They're zombie vegetables!"

Aaaaaallllrighty then.